Changing the World: All-New Tales of Valdemar

“I’m sure we can find a place for you.” Samina smiled. “Are you saying that you want to go back to Haven with us?”

“Can Dexter and any of the crows who want to come with me?”

“I don’t see why not,” Samina said. “I’ve brought back stranger things from my travels. Are you really certain that you want to leave your home?”

Maia nodded. “I wasn’t raised alone in the forest; that happened after my parents died and my brother antagonized all our neighbors. I didn’t know why everyone suddenly hated him—and me—but now that I do, I think it will be better for everyone if I leave here.”

“Then you can come with us as soon as Clyton and I can travel,” Samina said.

The Healer had done some work on Clyton, and he was walking normally now. It looked as though the flesh Maia had accidentally gouged out of his leg was going to heal completely without so much as a scar.

The crows were still telling stories of their trip to the temple; they had been ever since their return. They appeared to regard it as a great adventure.

Samina smiled as she watched Maia listen to them. “What are they saying?” she asked.

“They’re telling stories,” Maia said. “It’s hard to sort out and put into words.”

“Did you know that there are two name for a flock of crows?” Samina asked.

“No,” Maia admitted. “Most of the villagers called them a nuisance, but I never thought of them that way.”

“They’re often called a ‘murder of crows,’ but yours saved my life, so that’s not right for them.” Samina grinned. “These are obviously the other kind: a ‘story-telling of crows’.”

“I do talk with them a lot,” Maia admitted, “and they certainly talk back.”

“You know,” Samina said. “I think you’re wasted as a fletcher—not that you aren’t good at it,” she added hastily, “but there are more good fletchers than there are people with Animal Mindspeech.”

“So you think I should do something else?” Maia asked uncertainly. “What?”

Samina smiled and took Maia’s hand. “There’s a Temple in Haven that would kill to have you—if all its priests weren’t such gentle and peaceful souls.”

“There’s a temple that would want me?” Maia said in astonishment. “What kind of temple is that?”

“The Temple of Thenoth, the Lord of the Beasts.”

:It does sound like your kind of place.: Dexter’s mental voice was encouraging. Maia started laughing.

“Yes,” she agreed, “that does sound like a place I could fit in.”

Waiting To Belong

by Kristin Schwengel

Kristin Schwengel’s work has appeared in two of the previous Valdemar short story anthologies, among others. She and her husband live near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and recently adopted a gray- and-black tabby kitten named (what else?) Gandalf. Kristin divides her time between an administrative job, a growing career as a massage therapist, and writing and other pastimes.

When the Companion had come to Breyburn, folk had gathered in the square, though no one had raised any summoning cry. Nearly the whole of the town was there to see who would be Chosen when the dazzling white horse trotted into the square, gleaming harness-bells jingling and dancing in the late afternoon light.

Not that anyone truly doubted for whom the Companion had come on Search. No one was surprised to see Teo standing to the front of the crowd, framed by his family, staring at the Companion with a dumbstruck, delirious smile. His joy shone from every fiber of his being, so strong Shia could have sworn that she felt it too, rippling through her in waves.

Shia had turned her gaze away at the last moment before the Companion brushed its (no, her) soft nose against Teo’s, incandescent blue eyes meeting guileless brown even as their minds spoke. To Shia, it had seemed too intimate a moment to be observed—never mind that the rest of the town was staring avidly. She could not watch it.

Afterward, there had been an evening of well-wishing, of jokes and congratulations, and the occasional hearty “We always knew you’d make a Herald someday! Surprised they waited till you reached fifteen winters to send a Companion out for you, lad!”

And then they had gone, Teo and his Companion, off to Haven and his new life with the Heralds. Shia had held a baffling empty ache deep in her heart, taking small breaths to control it as she (and the rest of the town) watched them canter off the next morning. Teo’s face was flushed with the excitement, his unruly hair bouncing in time with his Companion’s long strides. She had watched only until he was far enough down the Old Quarry Road that she wouldn’t be thought rude, then had fled to the stillness and sanctuary of her herb room.

It was there that Calli Stadres found her, her head bent over the table while she stared unseeing at the plants and herb mixtures before her, one foot and ankle twined anxiously around the leg of her tall stool.

“He looked back.”

Shia’s head jerked upright, and she stared at her visitor through the wispy blonde strands of hair that fell over her forehead. Not many years older than Shia, Calli was wife to one of the town’s wealthiest merchants and already had a young daughter toddling beside her, clinging to her mother’s skirts.

“His parents waved, as though he had turned to look for them, but he didn’t wave back. I don’t think he even saw them.”

Shia reached out to a pile of dried seed-pods from the edge of the table, trying to still the unexplainable trembling in her hand. Calli watched the younger girl work, savoring the quiet coolness of the room and the crisp herbal scents around them.

“Why could you not say something to him? He is still Teo, after all.”

Shia glanced over at Calli, then returned her attention to the dried seeds as she carefully separated them from their husks for storage. The silence between them drifted a little longer, then she shrugged.

“A Herald’s place is in Haven. A Herald belongs to Valdemar, to the Crown, to the people.” She hunched one shoulder, as if hiding behind it. “After my mother’s death, the town allowed me to take her place as herbalist. I belong in Breyburn.”

Calli frowned. “There is no law that says otherwise, yet I think you are wrong. Thirteen was too young for you to be tied to such responsibilities, no matter how much you wanted to earn your keep. Surely there has to be more for you.”

“It does no good to dwell on it,” Shia responded at last. “It is as it is. Here, rub these together until they crack open for me.” She held out a handful of the dried pods to Calli, who looked at them for a moment, then giggled like a much younger girl.

“You’re just trying to make me useful, aren’t you?”

Shia only smiled, her hand still outstretched.

Of course, Teo came back to Breyburn, but only briefly, not even every Midwinter over the several years of his training. When he did, his time was taken up with his family, with the townsfolk at large, with the town council, and with the other Herald or Heralds he was usually in company with. And, of course, his Companion.

He was never there just as Teo, not anymore. He was Teo the Herald trainee, Teo the journeyman- Herald, soon to be Teo the Herald. He even looked like someone else in the gray clothing, especially when he suddenly grew several inches from one summer to the next Midwinter.

Unsure of how to approach this new person who looked so different and yet should be so familiar, Shia chose to retreat, keeping to herself in the solitude that had been hers since her mother’s death barely two years before Teo’s Choosing. If she was there at all when Teo came back to the town, she stayed to the rear of the crowd of townsfolk, ducking her head so her hair fell over eyes. She never noticed the concerned blue gaze of Teo’s Companion following her, nor did she see Teo’s eyes wandering restlessly over the faces when all were gathered together.

“Shia! Sheeeee-aaah!” Up on the mountainside, far from the town walls, where the winds sighed and roared by turns in the deep firs, there was no way that Shia should have heard a child’s thin cry. But hear it she did, in her head as much as her ears, and with that impossible sound came another impossible thing—a bone-deep knowledge that something was very wrong in Breyburn. She grabbed the last of her herb packs (how was it they were full already? what had she been gathering while her mind had been wandering who knows where?) and sprinted to where she had tethered her shaggy mare, stowing the pack and freeing the horse almost in the same motion. Without thinking, she reached up and broke off a small branch of one of the overhanging firs, tucking it and its three cones between the straps of the secured packs. She pulled herself up into the saddle and kneed the dun into the fastest trot she could safely take on the uneven mountain paths, letting the mare choose her steps as the early spring mountain- fog started to coalesce around them.

The knot in the pit of her stomach took on more solidity as she approached the town, although the urgency faded. She reined in the mare while she was still hidden beyond the treeline, looking down on the cleared lands of the townsfolk, and her guts churned. Smoke coiled upward from somewhere near the center of town, dark and thick, and the smell of it as it drifted towards her was wrong, wet and musty. She could see broken staves of wood near the main gate, and a few of the town guard nervously standing at attention beside the gate. Whatever it was had come and gone again, leaving the town in uneasy quiet as the day slipped towards evening. She kicked the mare to a canter, angling from the forest to ride onto the Old Quarry Road far enough down that the edgy guardsmen would recognize her well in advance as she approached—or would at least know Mirri’s stocky body and rough coloring.

The relief on Guardsman Fellan’s face as she rode up would have been amusing, were it not for the worry and fear that haunted the corners of his eyes.

“Bandits,” he said, before she even pulled up the mare. “Surprised, we were, and they seemed to know where to strike hardest. They knew who to hit, more’n what the usual raiders we’ve seen would know. Cap’n was first, then Sergeant. The merchants, too, they attacked and robbed, and then they were gone, quick as they came.”

“Dead or injured?”

“Four, five dead maybe, dozen or more injured. M’lady Stadres has got ’em all down to the chapel—they fired the inn.”

Shia swallowed, her heart quailing at the thought of that many injuries. Her mother had only known the basics of herbcraft and had often scolded her daughter for being an indifferent student. Apprehension of the severity of wounds she might face filled her, and despair clawed at her, tightening her stomach and freezing her blood in her veins. When the guardsman looked up at her, question in his eyes, she gave herself a mental shake. Healer she might not be, but she was the closest thing to one that the town had. She would have to do.

She nodded at the guards and angled Mirri down to the square, to the house across from the town’s one inn. As she neared it, she could see that the smoke was still drifting from the inn in slow coils, now held lower to the ground by the weight of the late afternoon fog that had started to roll down from the mountaintop. The building wouldn’t be lost, though, she thought. The rainy season was only just over, and the timbers hadn’t yet dried out, so they had been slow to catch and even then had smoldered rather than burned outright. It looked as though the townsmen had been quick enough to set up a water chain from the cisterns, and as she rode past, she could hear voices from the side of the building, assessing the damage.

She slowed Mirri as they approached the Stadres household. It was the only house in town large and elaborate enough to boast a chapel dedicated to Kernos, and the Stadres family were certainly the only ones wealthy enough to build one. Calli Stadres stood at the front door, her young daughter clutching her hand.

“I told you she would hear me!” Pira cried in triumph before her mother hushed her. Calli’s eyes met Shia’s in question, and Shia gave the tiniest of nods before dismounting. The impossibility of Shia hearing Pira’s voice was something that they would think about later—but Shia suspected that it would not be more than a few winters before Breyburn would have another white visitor.

“How many? How bad?” Shia started unloading her herb packs, glad that Calli had always been sensible. She was sure that most merchant’s wives Calli’s age would have been in hysterics, instead of calmly gathering the wounded into their own homes for care.

“Captain Nolan and two others were dead before the bandits left, but I think Sergeant Dara will be well soon enough. Several of the guardsmen can only have their pain eased, I think, but most of the others have lesser wounds. Twelve injured guardsmen, including the worst.”

Shia sucked in her breath. With three deaths, that was more than half of the town guard unable to act. No wonder those who remained were bewildered and uncertain. She handed two packs to Calli and swung the others over her shoulder, absently tucking the fir branch she had brought into the lamp bracket beside the door before she realized that she had harvested a silver pine, the tree of Kernos’ protection. She whispered a brief petition for the god’s hands to hold all those whose wounds she was about to tend, then followed Calli inside the house.

“And the others? The men at the gates said some of the merchants were attacked.” She reached out her hand to touch Calli’s arm as they hurried down the hall to the chapel. “Your husband? Is he—”

Calli’s breath hitched, but she kept walking. “Injured, but not the worst. Master Widthan may not last the night, though, nor Josette. And Master Riordan is gone.”

“Lord Corus will need to be informed, although I don’t know that he’ll be able to send any men from Torhold—the muster to Karse has spread his forces thin,” Shia said faintly. “He will need to send word to Haven, to the Heralds. His Majesty must also know of these new attacks, especially if they are organized. It might be they had help from Karse. Either way, if they met with what they deem success, they will be back. And Herald-Trainee Teo must be told of his father’s death.” She hoped her voice didn’t sound too strangled. Well, if it did, let Calli think that it was fear of more bandit raids that stole her breath. Even three years later, the strange empty ache that had blossomed as she watched him ride down the Old Quarry Road still swelled within her whenever she thought of him. “Take me to Sergeant Dara, first, then I’ll see the worst of the rest.”

For Shia, the next candlemarks passed in a blur of treating the wounded, moving from one injured person to the next. Thankfully, Calli was for the most part accurate in her assessment of the severity of injuries. Sergeant Dara had been knocked unconscious, but her other wounds were minor. She regained her senses while Shia was applying healing poultices to the cut that laced across her leg, and it was clear that she was in full possession of those senses. She began directing the remaining guard, propped up in her cot, the captain’s sword bared across her knees. She even dictated a message that two of the merchants’ sons would take down the mountain roads to Torhold on the fastest of the town’s horses.

Calli Stadres proved a surprisingly capable pair of hands assisting Shia, readily learning how to mix the basic poultices and clean and dress the lesser injuries. And if, between one patient and the next, she always walked down the hall to stand for a few moments at the door to the room where her husband slept, bandages swathed around his head and shoulder, Shia could hardly blame her.

When they had finished tending the last injured merchant, Shia was pleased with her work. She even thought that her herbs might be able to bring around a few of those that Calli had thought would not last. Josette, the innkeeper, she was sure, would make it, although she herself wouldn’t be able to take credit for that. The old woman was just too stubborn to, as she put it, “let ’em put paid to me if’n I wouldn’t let ’em put paid to my inn.” She had grumbled and complained about the damage to the inn while Shia had “fussed” over her, but she had finally accepted the sleep tea and let her body get to the more important business of healing.

Shia was glad, though, that she had been gathering in the area of the mountain where she had been, at that height, several of the best wild plants for bleeding injuries developed a higher potency. And today she had harvested an inordinate amount of those plants, more than she ever needed for the normal injuries of the remote mountain town. This was not the first time, however, that she had harvested without thinking about it. Every so often she would gather herbs in a daze, seeming neither to hear what was around her nor even to see what she was doing. She had learned to trust it, those rare occasions, for what she gathered in those moments was always used—like the time when she and her mother had gone to harvest feverdraw, and she had found her basket full of the elm bark they used in tinctures and teas for throat ailments, and that winter a coughing illness had stricken the town.

“Pira, stop twirling about like that! You’ll make me too dizzy to think!” Calli Stadres laughed as her daughter danced in the shaft of sunlight that lanced across the sunroom, her outstretched hands scattering tiny bits of seed-fluff that floated and glinted in the air around her. Her mother turned back to the worktable, reaching one hand around to rub her lower back. “Some days, I don’t know how I’ll ever keep up with two—” Her voice cut off when she saw Shia’s face, and she lunged forward to take the mortar and pestle from the young woman’s hands before she dropped them.

“Shia, what is it? What’s wrong? Are you well?”

Shia leaned forward until her head rested on the cool stone slab laid across the top of the table, trying to calm the roiling in her stomach.

“I . . . am well,” she managed. “Captain Dara . . .” her voice trailed off as another wave of something that felt like pain and anger hit her. Then, as soon as it had come, the feeling fled, replaced by the same surety of wrongness that she had felt up on the mountain when the town was first attacked. She pushed her hair out of her face and met Calli’s worried eyes.

“I think the troop has been ambushed.”

“How do you . . . ?” Calli’s eyes widened when Shia only shrugged, and she glanced over at Pira. The young girl had stopped twirling but just stood in the sunbeam, looking at her mother in confusion. Calli took in a slow breath of relief that her daughter had not been affected, then nodded slightly.

“I’ll check the bandage kits while you rub the powders for the poultices. We’ve set so many supplies aside from caring for the traders that we shouldn’t need to prepare too much new.”

By the time Captain Dara brought the wounded of her small troop back to the room in the Stadres household that had served as a makeshift infirmary since the first attack, Calli and Shia had prepared enough that they were immediately able to care for the worst of the injuries. This time, at least, none were life-threatening.

Shia unwrapped the hasty field bandages and held Lieutenant Fellan’s arm tightly, trying to keep from jarring his newly realigned shoulder as she attempted to match up the shattered bones of his forearm. “You seem to have had the worst of it of all the group,” she murmured. He had already bitten his lip to bleeding on the ride back to the town, and her liquor-laced herbal concoction for pain had barely started to take the edge off.

“Don’t know how they do it,” he muttered hazily. “They dance around the town when there’s traders, then slink off into nowhere. Traders’re coming ’round less, too. If’n we can’t stop ’em, it’ll be a thin winter. Cap’n Dara’s good, but she’s only one.” He grunted as Shia made a last shift of his wrist, then settled to a drugged sleep as the herbs deepened their effects. Letting his arm rest on the splint on the low table beside them, Shia closed her hands lightly over the break, trying to sense if anything still was out of place beneath the skin. Her fingers tingled slightly, feeling the heat of injury spreading up from his flesh, and she held her hand there for a longer moment, as though she could force the angry heat to subside and the bone to knit together.

Binding the lieutenant’s arm securely to the slats of her splint, Shia glanced over to where she could see the captain standing and talking to Calli and one of the other injured guardsman. Lord Corus had sent his approval for Dara’s field promotion to captain as soon as he had learned of the first attack, but as they had suspected, Torhold had not been able to spare any militia to pursue the bandits. Even Torhold’s Healer had only given a half-day’s visit to check on Breyburn’s injured. He had come a day or two after the first attack, glanced at the dead who were about to be buried, briefly examined those who were not yet back to their activities, then returned to Torhold, saying only, “The girl’s mother must have had good skills to teach her that well, for all that no one knew where she’d come from.”

Accepting that they were on their own, the townsfolk had resolutely taken matters into their own hands. Dara had taken any and all volunteers from the townsfolk or the shepherd and small farm families outside the town, training up some to join the town guard, others to simply learn how to stay alive if the bandits came back into the town. And come back they had, though none of their raids had the impact of the first. Rather, they picked away at the town and the trader caravans, making trade sporadic and shattering the cycles of the town’s summer. The season was half over, but it felt as though it had barely begun, for few of the townsfolk had been able to work as they usually did.

Captain Dara held out her arm to Shia, wincing just the slightest bit as she dabbed the sharp cleansing ointment over the edges of the wound. “It’s been months now, and we can’t find the bastard,” she said. “That’s what bothers me. He runs aground as soon as we get close. We’ve picked off his band and found most of his hidey- holes, enough that I don’t think he’ll be back soon, but he keeps slinking off. Bad enough that they’ve been coming back all summer, but if he has time now to go back to wherever he came from and find more men, he’ll be back as soon as the rains are done next spring.”

Shia sighed as she put down the cleansing pad and reached for her bowl. “Lieutenant Fellan is right. You’re only one. You need to take more care for yourself until Lord Corus can approve your new militia. No one else has the training, experience, or personality to lead the guard. Torhold can’t spare anyone now, any more than they could when Captain Nolan was killed in the first raid.”

“My young men—and the two girls—are doing well enough, especially since Fellan’s arm healed up so quick and he was able to help with the training again. They did well enough to take on an ex- merc bandit who thought to control the trade routes down from the quarry and the tin mines. We’ve stopped him for this year, at least.” Despite her frustration, the new captain’s satisfaction with her troop was palpable.

Holding the edges of the wound together, Shia applied her poultice and started wrapping bandages, her fingers tracing along the length of the wound beneath the fabric, feeling the heat from the angry gash. An absent part of her attention drifted down to the injured flesh, almost willing the healing to happen. She didn’t notice the startled way the captain’s eyes flicked up to her, so absorbed was she in considering the importance of Captain Dara’s success or failure. If they had indeed done enough damage to the surprisingly well-organized bandits to keep them from attacking for the last moon of the summer, the harvest and preparations for winter and the spring rains could go back to normal. Or normal enough to make do.

“At least the sheep and the goats have already been brought back down to the town green,” she said at last. “And the traders won’t fear to bring the grain supplies up here now, so we’ll be able to winter the animals well enough.”

The captain nodded, her eyes considering the young woman seated beside her. “We should think about increasing the grain stores this year, just in case. How are your harvests coming? Josette says her bones are telling her that it’ll be a long winter and a hard rainy season.”

Shia smiled fondly. “No one would ever dare suggest that Josette’s bones are telling her that she’s too old to spar with the youngsters. Calli and Pira have helped me gather, though, and Calli is allowing me to experiment with growing some plants in the sunny room next to the chapel. It’s close enough to the kitchen fires that I think it will stay warm enough to keep some of the hardier stock alive all winter.”

She didn’t add that she thought that Josette’s bones were right, and that she had already prepared for a long and hard season away from the mountain’s wild herbs.

Drawn by some unnameable call, Shia opened the side door off the Stadres’ kitchens and glanced out over the garden. As she expected, the rain was pouring down, creating lakes and rivers where in summer there were plant beds and paths. No sane creature stirred out of doors during the unpredictable flash rains, yet here she was, somehow knowing that she needed to be somewhere other than tucked securely in Calli’s tiny spare room, where she had spent the winter tending her experimental plants. Tugging her cloak up around her ears, she darted out through the sheeting rain and splashed around to the front of the house, finding a spot just under the eaves that was a little less wet. Not knowing why she was standing there, she stared down the main road for long, cold minutes, until she saw movement that was not falling rain coming towards her from the edge of her vision.

Mud-spattered, worn out, he was everything a Companion on Search shouldn’t be—nothing like the gaily caparisoned mare who had come for Teo. He was so drenched, it was impossible to tell where the lathered sweat ended and the cold rain staining his coat began. He didn’t even look white anymore, just a muddy dark gray. Yet he was unmistakably what he was—even to the bells on the soaked harness, though their ring could not be heard above the rain pounding on the roofs.

This time, Shia was the only one who stood in the square, rain running in rivulets down her face. Light glowed out of the windows around the square, and she suddenly hoped that no one was even looking out to see this bedraggled colt slogging through the fetlock-deep mud.

And then he was standing before her, his sodden nose brushing her cheek, his glorious, impossibly blue eyes swallowing hers.

:I’m sorry you had to wait so long for me, Chosen.:

Tears mingled with the rain on her face, streaming warm with cold, and Shia collapsed heedless to her knees in the muck, weeping out the agonizing emptiness of the last four years.

The Companion—Eodan, she knew without words—folded his forelegs and lay in the mud beside her, curving his neck around to draw her slight form against his steaming side, his warmth seeping into her bone chill.

:I came as soon as the King’s Own Companion said I was ready—although he warned me about the spring rains in Breyburn.: There was a note of self-deprecating amusement in his rich MindVoice. :You will learn that patience is not natural to me.:

“What about Pira? She’s Gifted, I’m sure, so shouldn’t you be for her . . .” Shia finally managed to get words past the rawness in her throat.

:Her Companion is more patient than I—Pira is still a little too young to begin the training. You, my Chosen, should never have had to start this late.: There was a strange note of regret coloring his MindVoice as it echoed in Shia’s head. :It would have been different if—: he cut off his thought, then abruptly changed the subject, nudging gently against her shoulder.

:Come, Chosen, it’s a good thing you’ll soon be wearing Trainee Grays, for those leggings are unsalvageable.:

Shia gave no response to his jest, lost in the wonder of Eodan’s presence, and yet baffled by the forlorn ache still within her, deeper than the presence of Eodan beside her—even part of her—could reach. Without words, she knew that Eodan knew, and regretted, that it was there inside her, that dull pain, that lost feeling of incompletion.

:Trust me, Chosen. You will understand soon. When we are in Haven, I think.:

Shia turned to stare at him in disbelief, astonished at her own courage in thinking to argue with a Companion. “In Haven? What about Breyburn? I can’t just up and leave them—and it’s folly to go anywhere during the flash-rain season.”

Eodan shook his head at her, and only now did she finally hear the jingle of his harness bells beneath the drum of the falling rain. :Chosen, you have been patient enough for two, but now that I am finally with you, this will be my time to practice it myself.:

The Last Part of the Way

by Brenda Cooper

Brenda Cooper has published over thirty short stories in various magazines and anthologies. Her books include

The Silver Ship and the Sea

and

Reading the Wind

. She is a technology professional, a futurist, and a writer living in the Pacific Northwest with three dogs and two other humans. She blogs and tweets and all that stuff; stop by

www.brenda-cooper.com

and visit.

Three riders passed beneath trees shrugging fall color into the wind. Each time a gust spurted through, cold and edged in winter, it plucked gold and orange and brown leaves and sent them to tangle in the riders’ hair and crunch under the hooves of their mounts. The redheads, Rhiannon and Dionne, would have been impossible to tell apart except that Rhiannon wore flamboyant Bardic red and Dionne a soft and subdued Healer green. The women shared the same red hair, bright blue eyes, slender figures, and the same deep laugh lines. They rode similar horses: big sturdy bays with wide white blazes and patient, alert walks. One of the horses had white socks and the other didn’t. Between them, a much younger man named Lioran sat easily on the back of a white Companion, Mila. Everything about Mila was neat and trimmed and nearly perfect, while her Herald wore his long black hair unkempt, had stains on the knees of his white uniform, and a sad silence on his face.

Dionne and Rhiannon had been riding circuit twenty-five years now and were too old to keep peace on the borders or fight teenaged toughs. But even usually peaceful towns needed healing and song, so they were sent around the easy middle of Valdemar, far from border skirmishes and the beasts of the Pelagir Hills and the intrigues of Haven. The twins were often assigned a young Bard or Healer who needed a safe year or two to gain confidence. But they’d never before been asked to take a Herald along. A mudslide had buried his family, and in fact his whole town; everyone he knew. The news had come to him right after he was given his Whites, right after he’d packed his belongings onto his Companion for a trip home to the small town of Golden Hill.

After two weeks, Dionne despaired of helping him. She watched Lioran’s face as Rhiannon’s musical voice chided him, “There will be things you can do, even in Shelter’s End.”

His voice came out gloomy. “There won’t be anyone under forty there.”

“You’ll be there,” Dionne responded, allowing only a bit of the disdain she felt into her voice. No one said you had to like a patient, or even a Herald. “We go where we’re needed, and don’t whine if we don’t like it.”

“I wish we could just go past. I don’t want to stop in a retirement town, or a town at all. I want the woods.”

Rhiannon looked as though she wanted to skin him, but all she said was, “The wind’s chill. We’d better find a place to make camp. We don’t really want to ride in on them at night, anyway.”

“How about right here?” he asked.

“How about you and Mila find someplace a little more sheltered?” Rhiannon countered, the impatience in her voice enough to make Dionne wince, although Lioran didn’t bother to react. Mila cast both women a baleful look, turning her head slightly side to side, watching each of them with her bright blue eyes. Although Dionne had no Mindspeech, she imagined Mila’s thoughts going something like, “He’s young. He’s hurt. He’ll come around.” Dionne grinned back at her, wishing for a way to tell the Companion how much she appreciated her patience. And how much she wished she had more of it handy. The boy got on her nerves.

Silence sat heavy on the group for half a mark. Dionne was about to give up and pick a place herself when Lioran pointed to a rather nice spot on a hill above the trail, in a copse of trees sturdy enough to shelter people and animals from most of the wind. Dionne rubbed her cold hands together as she waited for her sister’s nod.

It was almost full dark by the time they fed and brushed and watered the animals, and gathered enough fuel to start a small fire. Lioran did his share, silent and sullen, but without actual complaint. After they finished, the twins settled near the fire, stretching their fingers wide and close to the warm yellow-orange flames. Lioran didn’t sit beside them. He climbed up on Mila’s bare back, and looking out into the woods, he said, “Me and Mila are heading off. We’ll be back in an hour or two.” He didn’t wait for acknowledgement but simply faded into the trees and the darkness, his dirty Whites and Mila’s clean white outline the last thing they saw disappearing into darkness. If tonight was like every other night, when he came back, he’d look soft and sad.

Rhiannon sighed. “It’s too bad he’s not a kid. Then I could just tell him to snap out of it. I know he’s hurt, but all this pouting and whining is unbecoming in a Herald.”

“In anybody.”

“I sure hate him going off like that.”

“He’s a full Herald; he’s supposed to be watching over old women.”

Rhiannon arched an eyebrow.

“Well, that’s what most would think.” Dionne flexed her fingers and added another handful of small sticks to the fire. “Hard not to see him as a kid, even if we were younger when we got our uniforms. This is our last chance to get him out of his depression—we’re due back in Haven in two weeks.”

“So how do you think Shelter’s End is going to help?”

Dionne shook her head. “It’s not Shelter’s End itself. I mean, it’s a good town, and they always need help from a strong back. I hope that will get past his head and engage his heart.” She sighed heavily, shifting her weight to ease her aching back. “I haven’t been able to do it.”

“So what makes you think anybody else can? He’s skittish and hard.”

Dionne added a log to the fire and watched the sparks do a sky- dance in the wind. “Well, one of my old teachers is there. Melony. She helped us all out of funks, and that’s what he seems to need. I mean, it seems like he stopped being an adult in full Whites the minute he learned his parents died, and became a spoiled kid. I haven’t been able to reach him; whatever’s broken in him isn’t physical, or even really in his emotions. It’s like his very self is cracked. I bet Melony has some ideas. I’m going to ask her for advice. Don’t you remember how she helped Jon after he broke his hand and Yvette after that merc in town roughed her up?”

“Maybe. I was pretty dazzled by the Collegium.”

“Melony taught me salves and teas in my first two years there. Everybody loved her so much she got awarded Teacher of the Year three times in a row.”

“She’s still alive?”

“She was last time we came through.”

“Five years ago? I think I remember her. Gray hair?”

Dionne play-slapped at Rhiannon. “That describes the whole town.”

“Sorry. I don’t remember everything.”

“Yeah, well maybe age is getting in the way of your memory.”

“Already?” Rhiannon laughed. “We’re not gray yet.”

“I pulled out two gray hairs yesterday.” She looked toward the trees Lioran had disappeared through. “We should think about what we’re doing next.”

Rhiannon sighed. “I’m not ready to stop performing yet. But I hope your friend’s alive to help. Old age and experience beats smarts.”

Dionne let out a short, bitter laugh. “Then we should have succeeded by now.”

“We’re not old.”

“Tell that to my fingers.” Truth tell, it was Rhiannon she worried about, even though she showed no interest in even slowing down. As a Healer, Dionne would be fine even with the beginnings of arthritis, which was, truthfully, a bit noticeable on a cold morning of late. But old hands did real damage to a Bard. A Healer could speed the body’s natural response to damage, but there wasn’t much Dionne, or anybody else, could do about old age. And Rhiannon was stubborn as an old mule. She liked to take charge of everything. Queen of the Road. It made Dionne smile.

Sure enough, Rhiannon had a pronouncement about the topic. “We’re not ready for Shelter’s End yet.” And that would be the end of that. Rhiannon reached into her pocket and pulled out a hand-carved wooden flute. She started playing, and Dionne settled in to listen, content for the moment to just be with her sister and pleased that the unhappy Herald had taken himself off somewhere else. They’d both be older tomorrow, and they could worry about being older then.

Lioran, true to form, returned after about an hour. He looked as bad as Dionne expected him to, his face thin and drawn, his skin so pale he might be the child of a ghost. It was all she could do not to wince as Mila picked her way carefully through camp and stopped at a good place to drop her tack. Lioran took good, if quick, care of his Companion. Then he lay down on his rumpled bedroll, plumped his coat up to be a pillow, pulled his thick woolen blanket close up around his ears, and turned away from them all.

Mila took the first watch. Rhiannon gave Dionne a resigned look, with a small smile attached. When Dionne nodded, Rhiannon picked up her flute and blew the first soft notes of a lullaby. Dionne followed, and so the two women sang together, Rhiannon’s trained voice, the stronger, washing over Dionne until she, too, felt sleepy and content. They sang five songs and then the same five songs again, looking over at the back of the shivering, silent Herald from time to time. His breathing finally regulated into sleep. Rhiannon carefully packed her flute, and the women began to get ready to sleep themselves.

Dionne nestled closest to the fire, listening to the faint sounds of the warm coals and the stomp of the horse’s feet. Wind brushed branches together above her head. She imagined finding Melony the next day, making little lists in her head of all the things she had to tell her old mentor.

She must have eventually gone to sleep since Rhiannon’s soft hiss woke her.

Dionne opened her eyes, careful not to make a sound or change her breathing until she knew more. If it was Rhiannon’s watch, it must be the middle of the night. A light fog threaded through the trees above her and dampened her cold cheeks and nose. The thud of at least five horses, maybe seven, went by on the road below. The flash of a torch blinded her to the details of the riders. Gruff voices called out, “Hurry,” and “Quiet, now,” although clearly no one in the party really believed they needed to be quiet. They had thick accents and gruff voices. Undoubtedly from somewhere else and, if allowed to pass, not likely to come back this way.

There were too many to confront. Maybe fifteen years ago, but now? Dionne’s blood pounded through her as she held still, ready to leap up and grab her staff if the horses called attention to them. Or worse, if Lioran woke up and decided to play hero. The sounds faded slowly. Still, Dionne and Rhiannon held their tongues, listening until all they could hear was the night wind and an owl hooting mournfully in a tree above them. “Bandits,” Rhiannon whispered. “Not good. Riding away from where we’re going.”

“And they sounded proud of themselves.”

Mila must agree with them. She was already nosing Lioran up, her blue eyes wide with worry. Rhiannon covered the coals with dirt while Dionne and Lioran saddled up. They were on the road in short order. Mila’s tossing head made Dionne ask Lioran, “What does she know?”

“Something bad’s happened.” His eyes looked big in his pale face, his expression hard to make out in the meager light thrown by the stars overhead. “There’s death, and fear. She can feel it, but she can’t tell what it is . . . what happened. In Shelter’s End.” His voice sounded high and a bit squeaky. “I’m the only Herald around.”

In spite of their hurry, they started the horses at a fast walk before moving into a slow canter. It was too dark to allow them a full run. Mila pranced, keeping a close eye on the road ahead and behind, herding them toward town. Dionne glanced over at Rhiannon to see her eyes narrowed with worry, a combination of fear and fierceness playing across her features.

By the time they could see the town, dawn had started kissing the horizon. Gray light illuminated the two long streets full of small houses beside a placid, thin river. Nothing appeared to have been burned. No dead bodies littered the streets.

Hooves clattered as they trotted from the dirt trail onto the stone road. When they stopped, they heard the horses ‘hard-blowing breath and above that the sound of voices and tears and a low mournful wailing from one of the close-in houses.

Two men stepped out from behind a tree, both gray haired, one stooped and slow while the other still moved well. The slower one had on a torn red shirt. An old Bard, then. The stronger man wore no telltale colors, although that meant little. He smiled grimly as he neared them, looking to Lioren. “Glad to see you. I’m Jared.” He nodded toward the house they’d clearly been guarding. “In there. Ask them to send someone out to walk your horses cool.”

And this was where Lioran should be taking control of the situation. Dionne swallowed and let a beat of time go by. Rhiannon ran out of patience first, dismounting and handing her reins to the man. “I’m Rhiannon, and this is my sister, Dionne. “ She glanced at the Herald, her look driving him from Mila’s back. “And this is Lioran.”

The man gave the threesome a puzzled look but jerked his head toward the house. “They need you in there.” He nodded toward Dionne, who was untying her healing bag from the back of Ladystar’s saddle. “Especially you.”

Dionne made it inside first. A great room full of seats, including extra ones pulled in as for an impromptu meeting. Most of the chairs were full. Shovels and staffs lined the near wall; makeshift and true weapons alike. The conversation stopped, although a woman sobbed softly in the back, where five people had been laid out, blood from wounds staining a thin green rug. At least fifteen other faces turned toward her, and then Rhiannon and Lioran came in behind her and the group’s attention fell on Lioran.

Dionne headed straight for the back where two old Healers bent over the patients. She knelt beside them. “Can I help?”

“Her.” One of the women pointed and went right back to work on a set of deep cuts she’d just finished stitching.

Dionne bent over a shattered wrist, taking a deep breath to ground herself.

Behind her, Rhiannon asked, “What happened?”

Dionne focused on the splintered bone under her palms, whispering, “Hold still,” to the tearful woman she sat beside. “What’s your name?”

“Leidra.”

“Okay, Leidra, this shouldn’t hurt much.”

“I know.” As Dionne drew the earth’s energy to help her work, snatches of the story drifted at her from the lips of old men and woman. “They were strangers. Not from near here.”

“They burned Smiley’s farm before they came here, and who knows what else.”

“They didn’t expect us to fight them.”

“Well, we didn’t, not at first.”

“They didn’t respect who we are!” Petulant, a woman, her voice shaky.

“Were,” someone else snapped, then continued, “We stood our ground, quiet like, wanting our lives more than our stuff, but then they started in on us, saying they were looking for treasure.”

The warmth Dionne had built up in her hands flowed into the woman in front of her. She focused so hard that for a minute she didn’t hear or feel anything but her patient’s need. Only when she’d done all that she could did she listen again to the conversation. “ . . . died, then we fought them. Old Ray . . . he’s the one outside . . . he stabbed one of their horses in the butt with a pitchfork.”

Someone actually laughed. Good. Laughter almost always had healing properties, no matter how ironic or pained. Dionne looked for the next patient, and one of the other two Healers directed her to a man who couldn’t move his leg. She started feeling along it, starting at the foot and working up.

“But then they knocked him down. That got Cherie all mad, and she started throwing stones.”

And, of course, Dionne could fill in the rest. Even though they were old and frail, they had all done their turns in the salle during training, and a few of them would have been on the front lines of various wars and skirmishes. Even though Heralds didn’t tend to retire in Shelter’s End, the assortment of older Bards who didn’t want to teach and retired Healers who wanted the outdoors instead of the noisiness of the city included its own strengths. Melony was that way. She’d been offered a permanent place in Haven. Her answer had been that she’d spent forty years there, and now she was just darn well going to relax and be an old woman.

Melony! Where was she? Her patient groaned, and Dionne returned to the job at hand. Whatever had led him to choose this place for the end of his days, he’d come near them now. Blunt force—probably a fall—had shattered his hip, and he’d have to be really tough to make it out of this alive. The injury under her hands was simply insult added onto the deeper challenges of old age. But she could encourage his body to increase the flow of blood and help it feel less pain. After that, it would be pretty much up to him and how much he still wanted to live. She bent to her task, spending most of her awareness drawing and feeding energy, her lips spilling soft good wishes for the man under her hands, her eyes watching his cragged and lined face and his light green eyes. He stared at the ceiling, barely moving.

His breathing slowed and regulated. His skin began to regain color. His heartbeat was a thin thread. Rest would do him more good than she could now. Her knees hurt from kneeling on the thin rug, and her back screamed that she’d better stretch or find a Healer for herself. As she sat up straight and raised her arms, she came a little more aware of the room around her. There were fewer people; some must have gone off to bed or something. She hadn’t heard the door open or felt the fall chill enter the room. Rhiannon held a teapot in one hand, conferring in low tones with two women. Lioran stood against a wall, an impassive look on his face. Surely he should be outside?

“Where did everyone go?” she asked.

Rhiannon glanced over at her, met her eyes, and the look in them sent a cold fear to settle into Dionne’s chest. “What’s wrong?”

“They’re digging graves for the dead.” Rhiannon put the teapot down on the top of the great cast iron stove and crossed the room, pulling Dionne up and holding her. “Your friend, Melony, she’s the first one they actually killed. She got mad when they knocked down the guy you just finished working on. She told the leader off, and they made an example of her.”

It couldn’t be true. Melony should have died of old age, not violence.

Not after being the best teacher for three years running.

Violence shouldn’t happen to old women.

What an irrational thought.

She was a Healer. So was Melony. They knew the world was unfair. But still, Melony’s face swam in Dionne’s imagination as she slumped into her twin’s arms, grateful as always for Rhiannon. She swayed, held up by her sister, feeling as if everyone left in the room was watching them. Rhiannon brushed the hair from her face and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

Rhiannon, of course, knew what to say next, how to drag her into the present and focus her. “They killed two others, and one more fell and cracked his head. They’re all outside digging graves together.”

Dionne shivered, the room suddenly cold and her skin clammy. She swallowed. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t seen and felt death. But she’d so wanted Melony’s help! She glanced toward Lioran, to find him watching her closely, his narrow, pale face a closed book, his eyes almost afraid. “I should go help them dig.” She kept her gaze on Lioran. “We all should.” Although people from nearby towns bartered for singing and healing with strong backs, she hadn’t seen any. This near the end of harvest, there might not be any. They were the three ablest hands left here, and Lioran was the strongest by far in spite of being slight of frame.

The look he gave her was deep with resentment, almost like hatred. It couldn’t be hatred. People with hatred in their hearts didn’t get Chosen, but it was it was an emotion as dark as his eyes and his hair and as unfocused as her own pain. He stalked to the door, threw it open, and headed outside without so much as a word. Dionne took a step to follow him, but Rhiannon’s arm shot out and stopped her. “Not after all that work you just did.” For emphasis, she glanced down at the old man Dionne had just finished with. She led Dionne to an empty overstuffed chair. “You’ll be wanted when they’re ready to bury her. These people are used to digging graves, if usually for different reasons than this. It’s probably familiar salve to their wounds.”

“But Lioran?”

“Can hang himself for all I care.” Rhiannon shook her head. “I don’t mean that. He’s just gotten under my skin. Besides, Mila won’t let him. Hang himself, I mean. If he doesn’t go off into a blue funk, he might even be useful to the diggers.”

He was already in a blue funk. Before Dionne could get even one word out, Rhiannon had covered her with an extra coat, kissed the top if her head, and turned back to the stove and the teapot. No use talking to the Red-headed Queen of any Situation when she was in this mood.

Her next conscious thought was to wonder how the room had gotten so warm. It smelled like black tea and flowers. Rhiannon was humming a soft ditty about working she often sang when they were setting up or taking down camp. Dionne blinked and looked around, her eyes starting out on Rhiannon, who held out a steaming cup. Dionne took the cup, warm in her hands. She sipped, the tea so pungent it opened her sinuses and made room for fresh thoughts in her full head.

Memories came back. Melony. Murder. The bandits.

Maybe she should have skipped the tea. The wounded still lay in the back of the room. One of the two Healers leaned back against the wall with her eyes closed, soft snores indicating she slept. A tired old woman who’d just done too much. She would look like that soon, herself. She and her sister were both getting old.

From the change in angle of the light slanting through the windows, she’d slept at least two marks, maybe more. Funny how it felt like moments. She took another sip of tea and choked some words past the lump in her throat. “Are they done?”

“Soon. That’s why I got you up.”

“Hmmmph.” Dionne handed her the empty tea cup and walked over to the wounded. They still slept, a typical outcome of healing. They all breathed normally, and Dionne adjusted a pillow here and a blanket or coat there before she went to the privy to clean up and wash her face. The cold water did only a little to help her feel refreshed. Surely it was just because she’d spent so much energy healing, but Melony’s death weighed on her mood like a stone, so heavy it was impossible to drag up a welcoming smile as a woman bundled in a warm coat and handmade sheeps-wool scarf came in the door. “Is the Healer here? Dionne?”

“I’m here.”

“Ylia.” The way the woman said her name had a bit of singsong in it. “We’d like you to come out, to say something before we bury them all.”

Dionne shouldered into her coat, sure she didn’t want to go stand graveside and say nice pretty things. She was too tired.

She and Rhiannon followed Ylia to the four graves. Either Rhiannon had told them about her relationship with Melony or someone had remembered, since although the other three were finished, they’d saved the work of throwing the first earth onto Melony’s body for Dionne. The simple gesture made the last few steps to the graves even harder to take.

She stood in front of Melony’s coffin. The lid was still open, the familiar, beloved face marred by a cut cheek and a bruised lip. With her life gone, her mentor appeared simply slight and thin, wispy. Dionne felt thinner herself, as if some of her soul followed Melony, as if her past had begun to die.

Lioran and Rhiannon stood behind her, close enough for Dionne to hear their breathing. The same man who had taken their reins this morning—Jared—climbed down into the grave and closed the lid of the coffin, hiding Melony from the world.

The faces standing graveside were lined with spider webs of dignity and pain, some of the men with settling jowls or bald heads, most of the women shaped more like boxes than urns, slow and broad, a few thin and reedy, all bone and skin. As a group, the primary expressions they wore were resignation and hope. Dionne tried to look hopeful, to be the Healer she was, but all she could manage was a lighter despair than she’d started with. The afternoon was like molasses, time moving slow and everything exaggerated.

She knelt down and took a fistful of rich, damp earth. A week of relentless rains had stopped a few days ago. Even though the surface of the earth had dried in the previous day’s wind, the bottom of the grave was damp, dark mud.

As soon as she stood, she started talking, not saying anything at all like what she usually said at graves. Not comforting. “Life is not fair. It unfairly plucked this wonderful woman too early, and for doing what she always did. Helping people. I came here to get help from her; she has helped me all my life when I needed it. Oh, I haven’t seen her for years, but that’s partly because she helped me grow up.”

Rhiannon came and stood beside Dionne, like a pillar. It gave Dionne the strength to continue. “This year I needed her, and she’s not here.” A tear fell down her face. She let it go. “Healers cry. That’s something Melony taught me. If we don’t cry, we die inside, a little bit every day. So when we need to, we cry.”

And then she was sobbing, great piles of breath backing up in her throat and bursting out, her nose and eyes running like streams. She threw the dirt before she couldn’t see any more; then she knelt down by the grave, Rhiannon next to her.

Head bowed, she heard other fistfuls of dirt thudding into the hole. Murmured prayers accompanied each throw. One and another and another.

“Thank you.”

“Speed on your journey.”

“I’ll always remember the blackberry jam.”

“Goodbye, and who am I going to weave with now? I’ll miss you so.”

“Pass well.”

In time, the wet sloppy sounds stopped.

Rhiannon elbowed her gently.

Dionne looked up in time to see Lioran throw his own fistful of mud. A tear streaked down his cheek as well, and then another, the most genuine emotion Dionne had ever seen on his face. He was doing the one thing she hadn’t seen him do since she met him. Crying.

She started to push herself up, but Rhiannon held her down. “Finish your own grief.”

But her grief had lightened a little. She glanced back at the coffin, smeared and splattered with mud and prayers. “Thank you,” she whispered. “You did find a way to help.”

Almost everyone went back to their violated houses, and even Rhiannon followed, murmuring something about making more hot tea. Dionne stayed graveside, standing in the chilling breeze while leaves blew around her feet. Lioran came to stand beside her. His eyes were red and sore, his cheeks puffy and pink, his hands covered in mud, his Whites dirty beyond saving. He put an arm around her and pulled her close to him, the two of them standing in silence for a long time. She felt warmer with him there. Finally he whispered, “You’ll remember her. I remember my mom every day. I remember the way she bit her tongue when she cut potatoes for dinner and how her voice lilted when she called Jackie, our farm dog. I remember my little sister calling me a wimp and a bookworm and then asking for help with numbers.” His voice had lost the whine. “I remember my dad the day I was Chosen, looking like the best and worst thing ever had all happened to him at once and wishing me well.” He swallowed. “That’s where I go at night, to remember them. I’m so afraid that I’ll go back to town and get busy and forget the little things, and then they’ll really be dead.”

Dionne looked down at the fresh earth. “She’s dead. I will forget the details, because I’m not dead, and I have a job to do. But that doesn’t change the beauty of her life or make what she gave me any less.”

“I have work, too.”

“Yes.” More silence, and then Dionne whispered, “Thank you for telling me about them.”

“Thank you for singing to me,” he said. “I’ll tell Rhiannon that, too.”

Two days later, they started their return journey to Haven. There, they’d tell their tales and see if there was a way to get help for Shelter’s End, maybe some guards or a few young families. They’d encourage the Crown to send out a hunting party to find the bandits and clean up after them. Ylia and Jared accompanied them to be witnesses, riding horses borrowed from a farm in a nearby town. Haven was stretched—it was always stretched—and Dionne expected that only a little could be offered. But they’d give whatever was possible.

Dionne cracked her sore knuckles and told her back there were a few more years of riding left. Shelter’s End was worth keeping, maybe a place they’d go themselves, although not for a while.

On the first night away from town, Lioran picked a campsite without being asked. He did go off with Mila, bare-backed and silent, but on his return he didn’t roll away from them all and stare out into the night.

He sat beside them at the fire, Ylia and Jared on one side, Lioran between Rhiannon and Dionne on the far side. When Rhiannon started to sing, he joined in. Dionne had never heard his voice. It was rich and full, and confident.

Midwinter Gifts

by Stephanie D. Shaver

Stephanie Shaver works in the online gaming industry, where she has donned the hat of writer, game designer, programmer, level designer, and webmaster at various points in her career. Like most people who work by day and write by whenever, her free time is notoriously elusive. She can be found online at

sdshaver.com

and other virtual hives of scum and villainy. Offline, she is either hiking with the smirking entity she calls “The Guy” or on the couch with cats and a laptop stacked atop her, recovering from the aforementioned hiking trail.

“This is madness,” Lelia said.

“This?” Her twin, Lyle, looked over his shoulder at the Haven marketplace, packed with people engaged in the mindless, happy activities that swirled about at this time of year. “It’s just the Midwinter Market.”

She punched his shoulder, a futile gesture as they were both bundled up against the cold; she in mittens and a coat, he in riding leathers and a heavy white cloak. Lyle’s Companion, Rivan, stood off to one side, saddled and ready to go. Five years as a Field Herald had whittled Lyle down—punching him felt like punching a tree. He grinned at her pitiful attempt to bruise.

“You’re such a mooncalf sometimes,” she muttered, sweeping her bangs back under her cap so she could fix him with a full glower.

“I was being—what d’ya call it? ‘Funny’?”

She only frowned. Anyone who knew the two would have been amused (or greatly alarmed) by their role reversal. She—solemn as a priest, he smirking like a page who’d filched cream cakes off the queen’s table.

They were in a snug side street off the market, one of the few not accommodating the overflow of stalls and hawkers. A few minutes ago she’d been happily browsing jewelry in her Scarlets, which was probably how he’d spotted her. Usually she wore plainer clothes, but she’d hoped formal regalia would drum up a little Midwinter work.

Work had found her, all right. And it wore Whites.

“They realize I’m a Bard?” she said. “Not a Herald?”

“That’s the point.”

“They also know that I will likely foul this up?”

“You don’t even know what ‘this’ is.”

“Even more likely!”

“Lelia.” He reached out and touched her shoulder, gracing her with a beatific smile that had reassured more than a few Valdemarans in its time. “You’re going to do fine.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Did you suggest me?”

Lyle cocked his head. “Actually, no.”

“Well, if you didn’t—”

Something nuzzled the back of her neck, and she shrieked, leaping forward. Lyle grabbed her shoulders and gently turned her around to face the Companion waiting there. The Companion inclined his head and bent his knee in an equine bow.

:Be polite to Vehs,: Lyle Mindspoke to her.

:Vehs? Companion to Herald Wil?: she thought back, sweating with the effort. Their twin-bond was not the stuff of legend. If they hadn’t been touching she wouldn’t have been able to MindSpeak to him at all.

:Yes.:

Lelia’s heart sank. Of course it would be him. The network of Heralds only went so far. Wil, Lyle’s senior on Circuit training. Wil, who probably only knew one Bard—her. Wil, the Herald she’d been obsessed with years ago. Just the memory of the way she’d romanticized him made her ears burn.

She tried to reassure herself. But you grew up. You stopped wearing that stupid necklace he gave you. You got over it. She straightened her spine. You’re a Master Bard now.

Suddenly Lyle hugged her, disrupting her train of thought. “Love you!”

She sagged against him, letting some of her anxiety drain out. “Stay safe,” she muttered. “Remember that if you die on the job, I will eulogize you in a five-part cycle with at least two flute solos.”

He chuckled. “By the way, I told Mama and Papa you’d come with me next year for Midwinter.”

She drew back, horrified. “You didn’t.”

He grinned.

“Lyle—Midwinter is about earning money for a Bard—”

His face grew stern. “When was the last time you visited, Lelia?”

She sputtered, unable to say anything but, “I can’t afford it!”

“We’ll figure something out.” Lyle winked, then gestured to Vehs, who had presented a stirrup. “Up you get!”

She ignored his offer of help, despite Vehs’s mountainlike build. She didn’t so much mount as scale him. He whickered and turned. At the last possible moment, Lelia twisted round and said to Lyle, “I’m staying in your room. Hope you don’t mind.”

His face fell. “What?”

She squeezed Vehs gently. He took her lead and leaped forward, moving off into the crowds. The last she heard from Lyle was: “Lelia! If you burn down the Herald’s wing—”

Vehs chuckled in his Chosen’s head.

Wil leaned against a post in the Companions’ stable and thought back, :What?:

:I have been part of something sneaky. Mine is an evil chuckle.: He demonstrated it again.

:Oh.: Wil rubbed his brow. :For the record—:

:Yes, yes. It’s a terrible idea. Understood, Chosen.:

Vehs chuckled again.

Wil paced. He was not alone in the stable—another Herald, the official who would be signing off on this “mission,” stood nearby with hands clasped behind his back. Always still. Always composed.

Not Wil. He kicked up hay- and grain-dust as he paced between the deepening shadows of late afternoon. He wanted another solution, but no ideas were forthcoming.

He took a step, gray winter sunlight sliding over him, and the next put him in shadow. Another step, and—

His gut wrenched as his Gift triggered.

—body on the floor and a woman in jewelry standing over it, two knives at her waist, one in her hand, the tip bloody as she smiled and raised it—

He came back to himself on his knees, clutching his head. Over on the other side of the stable, the other Herald asked, “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” Wil said, climbing to his feet and brushing off his knees. “Sir, I don’t know if this—”

“Wait for her to get here,” the Herald said. “Then we’ll decide if it’s a bad idea.”

I could swear he’s been talking to Vehs, Wil thought sourly.

As if cued, Vehs said, :We’re coming through the Herald’s Gate.:

Wil walked over to stand beside the senior Herald. He folded his arms across his chest, and watched as the red-clad rider drew closer.

Vehs stopped a few feet away from the big open building of Companions’ stables.

Oh, Lelia thought when she saw who stood next to Wil. She dropped to her feet and executed a deep curtsy, sweeping off her cap. “M’lord Herald,” she said.

Queen’s Own Talamir inclined his head slightly.

“Herald Wil,” she said to the other, dropping another curtsy, albeit more shallow. A fierce joy welled, unbidden, inside her. She did her best to squash it.

I am a Master Bard! I am a Master Bard! she reminded her galloping heart.

Wil grunted a hello.

“How much did Lyle tell you?” Talamir asked her. His voice had a faint quaver, but his gaze was direct and difficult to meet. Even if he hadn’t been spooky as a haunted castle, being under the eye of a Herald this high gave Lelia the quakes.

“Nothing,” she said honestly. “Just that the Heraldic Circle’s interested in enlisting a Bard for something delicate.” Her voice dropped in volume as she finished the sentence, glancing about nervously. She had to presume that the Heralds had chosen the stables for a reason, but it still felt awfully open.

“It’s safe,” Wil said blandly, addressing her concern. “The Companions are keeping an eye out.”

Lelia nodded.

“Lyle vouched for you as trustworthy,” Talamir commented.

Lyle, you mooncalf, Lelia thought furiously.

“He—” Talamir indicated Wil with a nod “—has reason to get inside the mansion of a lord in Haven without anyone knowing a Herald is there. And I have it on good authority that the lord’s wife is seeking a musician for her Midwinter parties.”

Lelia pursed her lips. Suddenly, this didn’t sound so bad.

“Discretion would be required,” Talamir said. “Who placed you there would have to remain confidential. This is a potentially volatile situation.”

She nodded. “Discretion. Understood.”

“Do you?” Wil asked, fixing her with a look. His tone caused a flicker of irritation to rise inside her, and when she met him gaze for gaze she saw in his face something she hadn’t anticipated: deep distrust.

Not skeptical, not suspicious—he didn’t trust her.

The joy of reunion died, leaving behind a wealth of annoyance.

“I’ve performed for the queen,” she replied coolly, and had to suppress a smirk when he blinked in obvious surprise. Didn’t know about that, did you? she thought. “M’lord Talamir, would you say I did so with grace?”

“Indeed,” the Queen’s Own murmured.

“Also,” she continued, “it’s been a while since I wore my Rusts, but I’m sure Dean Arissa would vouch for me.” Assuming she’s forgotten about that incident with the chirra and the inkwell.

“Well, Herald,” Talamir said to Wil, “it’s either this or try to get in as a servant.”

Wil massaged his forehead, grimacing. “I guess . . . we’ll try this.”

“Very well.” Talamir rubbed his hands together lightly. “I will make the arrangements. Do you have a handler?”

“Maresa Applegate,” Lelia replied promptly.

“I shall make your arrangements with her, then. I leave you two to the rest.” He walked off abruptly, without further farewell.

When Wil finally bothered to look at Lelia, he did so with a sad, sober expression. It made her own smile fade a little.

“I’m glad to see you,” she said, and hugged him.

Women confused Wil.

He never felt comfortable around them unless they were younger than fifteen or older than dirt. Or married. Or saddled with babies.

None of which described Lelia. When she’d been younger, she’d been—well, manageable didn’t cover it, but it had been different.

Now, though . . .

He patted her back awkwardly as she hugged him and felt relieved when she disengaged. Not that it hadn’t been a nice hug—her coat hung open, and he’d shed his due to the warmth of the heated stables. Her body squished comfortably in the right places. Her height had also put her hair right under his nose, giving him a whiff of honey and cinnamon.

And so it went around the women- who-confused-Wil. They hugged him, or said they were glad to see him, and his response always felt wrong.

He decided to focus on what he knew: being a Herald.

“I’m staying at the Companion’s Bell,” he said, “as Attikas Goldenoak.”

“What else can you tell me about this—whatever it is?”

He briefly thought about explaining it to her. Well, Lelia, I’ve been having stomach-lurching visions of a horrible murder, but there’s no hard evidence aside from a brigand’s confession and a handful of gems. In fact, the only solution the supposedly brilliant Queen’s Own could come up with was dropping me in the lord’s home and “letting my Gift do its work.”

No. No, the only thing worse than this so-called plan was trying to explain it to someone. “The less, the better,” he said.

She rolled her eyes. “You won’t pass for an entertainer, you know.”

“That’s just one problem with this plan.”

:It’s not a problem,: Vehs said stubbornly. :You just don’t want to come up with a solution.:

“Assistant?” Wil hazarded, trying to mollify his Companion.

“The Whites might give you away.”

“Conveniently, I wouldn’t be wearing them.”

She widened her eyes innocently. “The Queen lets you take them off?”

Wil felt his cheeks burn. Was she being funny or making fun of him? She was smiling. What did it mean?

She nodded to herself. “I have an idea. You have a weapon?”

He gave her a disgusted look.

“One you can wear to a party without looking like an idiot?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent. On that note—”

“Going to tell me why?”

She cocked her head. “Oh, I think the less you know, the better.”

Vehs chuckled gleefully.

:Glad you’re amused,: Wil thought sourly at him.

“I need to collect some things,” she said. “See you at the Bell in the morning?”

“Sure,” he mumbled.

“Have a good night, Herald.” She waved and wandered off, whistling as she went.

Wil directed his attention to Vehs.

:It was funny,: Vehs said.

Wil stalked off in a direction opposite hers. Not the fastest route off the Palace-Collegia complex, but at least it guaranteed he’d be alone.

Vehs drew up beside him.

Mostly alone, Wil thought.

:Talamir thinks she’s capable,: Vehs said. :And Lyle is a Herald.:

:I’d be happier if she were, too.:

:But then she wouldn’t be a Bard. And then you wouldn’t be able to get onto the Count’s grounds.: Vehs’s amusement sparkled like barleywine.

Wil looked in the direction the Bard had gone. :She has matured. I mean, physically. She has—um—:

:Womanly assets.:

Wil flushed, remembering the brief but warm hug. :I wasn’t looking—okay, I was. But that wasn’t—exactly—:

:She’s a woman now.:

:But she’s still Lelia.: He found distinct comfort in that bit of curmudgeonry.

Vehs bumped him from behind. :This is your problem, you know. You only have faith in me and other Heralds.:

:That’s because I like breathing.:

:There are worse things than dying.:

:Like what?:

:Never truly living?:

Wil guffawed. :What philosopher’s memoir did you dredge that from?:

Vehs would not be deterred. :Just because someone doesn’t wear White—:

:I’ll think about it,: Wil replied, annoyed. Vehs went silent.

But Wil knew the Bard, and what she was capable of.

And that worried him.

Wil thought he’d been poleaxed by another vision when the countess swept in. But his gut remained quiescent, and no invisible force drove him to his knees. They were here, now.

“I am Countess Chantil of Tindale,” she said. Three attendants accompanied her: two ladies and the stiff-collared butler who had fetched her.

“I’m Master Bard Lelia.” Lelia dropped a curtsy and skillfully elbowed Wil at the same time. He bowed hastily. “This is my bodyguard, Attikas.”

Chantil’s brows crept upward. “Bodyguard? Really! Admirers following you home, Bard?”

Lelia smiled blandly. “Something like that.”

Bodyguard. That had been Lelia’s plan yesterday morning when Wil’d walked downstairs and found her waiting. Wil had (grudgingly) admitted it wasn’t a bad idea. A visit to the Midwinter Market had yielded proper clothes, and his long-knife completed the ensemble. No one expected him to dance, sing, or even speak—just look grim. Something he excelled at.

Chantil gestured. “This way.” She swept off down a hallway, retinue trailing.

Wastes no time, Wil thought.

“You’ll be playing in the grand hall,” Chantil said, walking so briskly Wil thought her heeled shoes would crack the marble floors. “Any needs you have, please speak to my steward, Einan.” She gestured to the man Wil had taken for a butler.

She wheeled suddenly, causing her voluminous raw silk skirts to spin. “I would appreciate it if you kept things—” She coughed delicately into her satin- gloved hand. “—cheerful and understated. Nothing morose, please.”

A glint lit in Lelia’s eye. Wil immediately knew that had been the wrong thing for the countess to say. He hoped that Lelia’s retaliation would be discreet enough to not get her position here terminated.

:Focus on your job, Chosen. Let the Bard do hers.:

:If she performs a protracted sing-along of “The Vigil That Never Ends” . . . . :

Vehs snickered.

“As I stated before,” Lelia said, reemploying that graceful curtsey she’d used earlier, “I am well experienced at performing for clientele of your caliber, Countess. And might I say what an honor it is to be here. Your happiness is my first priority.”

These seemed to be the words the Countess wanted to hear. “Oh, you Bards.” Her eyes flitted to Wil, and her smile soured a trifle. “Surely, it’s quite safe here—”

“It’s a matter of my peace of mind,” Lelia said firmly. “And now, since you have me performing this very eve, I find it necessary to test the acoustics of the chamber.”

Chantil’s smile didn’t quite play true. “If you need anything, the kitchens are that way.” She gestured toward a wing of the mansion. “Or find Einan or Marjori. They can assist you.” She gave Wil a final cursory glance and then sashayed off, minions in tow.

Lelia set herself up on a chair, gittern in lap. Wil stood about, feeling awkward and unnecessary, until she said, “You know, I think the countess is right. I should be quite safe here. Be a dear and fetch me some water?”

When he didn’t move, she gave him a curious look, then broke into a laugh and shooed him. “Go on.”

As he started forward, she called, “Don’t get lost.”

His confusion lasted to the door—and then her hints sunk in. Getting lost was exactly what he needed to do. He plunged into the depths of the mansion.

As a trainee, he’d been taught that ForeSight wasn’t all flashes of the future—that his uncanny “gut instinct” stemmed from it. And that doubt proved particularly toxic to someone with his Gift, because it muddled its messages.

He tried to listen to his gut now as he passed oaken doors with brass knobs and double doors with inlaid glass leading out to the atrium. He navigated twisty corridors, noted alcoves with busts of former Tindale lords in them, and passed a door with gryphons carved on it. He saw cozy windowseats with curtains both drawn and down, flower petals strewn across the cushions.

He tried, but eventually he had to admit defeat and return to the Bard, empty-handed.

Midwinter Vigil wasn’t for four more nights, but you couldn’t tell that by the press of revelers at the mansion. Lelia thought her sets were well received, although they sounded contrived to her ears. No one listened to her, anyway. She was little more than a musical bauble at parties like this.

Maresa had worked out an excellent contract, not just in payment, but also in the number of breaks Lelia got. It gave her ample time to lurk and mingle while Wil went on endless “errands” to fetch her water and tidbits. The countess’s entourage avoided her, but the servers were happy to talk.

The characteristics of a Bard were curiosity as deep as the sky and enough charm to coax secrets from a stone. By the end of the night Lelia had a pretty good idea why Wil was here.

“So,” she said, once they were back at the Bell and could safely shed their coats and personas, “I talked to some servants tonight.”

Wil’s eyes narrowed.

“Andris is the countess’ fourth husband. Did you know that?”

His face went blank, and she thought, Ah ha!

“The count’s awfully young,” she continued. “Seemed impressionable to me. Vulnerable, too.”

“Lelia.”

“I hear her last three husbands all died under questionable—”

“Stop.”

She held the sentence’s ending hostage, meeting and holding his gaze.

“It’s not a game, Lelia,” he said quietly.

“And I told you I know that and you act like I don’t!” She shook her head at him, hoisting her heavy pack of books and notes. “Good night,” she muttered, and stomped off to trudge through the cold.

Wil rubbed his forehead.

“I can’t do this,” he said at last.

:You can!: Vehs protested.

:No. I can’t.: Wil unbuckled his belt and slipped his weapon loop off. :The stories are right. Talamir’s halfway to the Havens. Only a simpleton would have assigned me to do this with—her.:

:Chosen.: Vehs’s mind-voice was flat serious. :That isn’t it at all.:

:Vehs, I can’t—:

:Shut up!:

Wil rocked on his heels, feeling as if he’d been slapped.

:Ever since you spoiled that brigand’s ambush, this is all I’ve heard! Endless whining about how you can’t and this isn’t your forte. You’re a Herald. It’s all your job!:

Wil sat, stunned into silence. He’d never known Vehs to be this—direct.

:You are the one Herald with ForeSight having these visions. You are the one who stopped the brigand, interrogated him under Truth Spell, and learned of the danger to Andris. And yes, you are the one who will uncover enough evidence to take to the queen so we can keep Chantil from murdering her fourth husband! And do you know why?:

:Why?: Wil asked meekly.

:Because you are my Chosen, dammit, and I didn’t Choose an idiot!:

A long silence followed, and then, :And neither did Rolan.:

Wil slumped. :I’m sorry. I just—I don’t—: He carefully rephrased the thought. :I feel like a fish out of water.:

:Talamir gave you gills. Use them.:

Wil touched his neck, confused.

:The Bard, Chosen.:

:What? No. No no no—:

:She learned a lot in one night. She is far more social than you. She fits in where you do not. If you haven’t completely offended her, she might even help you.:

Vehs retreated then, leaving Wil alone with his thoughts.

He crawled into bed, but it didn’t want him. He tossed and turned, thoughts churning. Ages later, he gave a resigned sigh.

Vehs is going to be insufferable, he thought.

With that realization, Wil finally slept.

Lelia had neither a smile nor a good afternoon for Wil the next day. Wil tried to strike up conversation, and every time she either walked faster or intercepted a street vendor, cutting him off.

Oh, sure, when I want to apologize . . . , he thought, irritated.

Once at the mansion, she immediately set up and started playing. He stood mutely by, finally wandering off when she muttered, “Water.”

He wandered the hallways and corridors, trying to feel whatever his Gift relayed. Past an alcove, past a cupboard, past the door with the twin gryphons carved on it, and—

He stepped back to stare at the door. Hunger pangs, or something else? That door . . .

It opened.

He jumped, face to face with Einan, Chantil’s toady.

“Are you lost, sir?” he asked.

“Uh—yes. Sorry. Privy?”

Einan pointed. Wil thanked him and hurried off.

The Bard’s silence lasted even after her performance, and when they marched back to the Bell, she walked past the front entry.

“Hey—” he called.

She looked back, glaring coldly. She hadn’t yet stopped.

Wil winced. He pointed to the Bell. “I want to talk. Please.”

She slowed, then turned—and came back.

:Nicely done, Chosen,: Vehs said.

Upstairs, she sat down on the edge of the bed and said nothing.

Wil started pacing.

“I—” Can’t believe I’m saying this “—need your help,” he said.

She cocked her head.

“Somehow, I need to get around that mansion without anyone interrupting.” Wil stopped long enough to meet her gaze. “Can you help?”

“I . . . can.” She pursed her lips. “Have you heard about Salia?”

“What?”

“Chantil’s former maid. One of her trusted circle. A week after the Tindales came to Haven for Midwinter Festival, Chantil ousted her for stealing.” Lelia pulled her knees to her chest and rested her chin on top. “Einan, Marjori, and Ylora—that’s the third one—won’t talk about her, but the others—” She chuckled. “Oh, ’twas just scandalous.”

“Okay. Interesting, but—” He stopped. “Wait. What was she accused of stealing?”

“Silver, jewelry. A couple of necklaces and brooches.” :The brigand’s mysterious employer paid him in gems,: Wil thought, excited.

:You think Chantil took them off her own jewelry to pay the brigand and then blamed it on Salia?:

:And I have to wonder if she melted those settings down or hid them to reset later. How smart do you think she is?:

:Or how arrogant.:

Wil thought of the gryphon-door room, and his gut twinged. :Exactly.:

“Did Chantil report her to the Guard?” Wil asked.

“Curious you should ask!” Lelia’s eyes sparkled. “Chantil never demanded the jewelry back, never brought charges against her. She didn’t even do the ousting—gave all the dirty work to Einan or Marjori, depending on who you ask. Chantil said she didn’t want to see Salia again.”

Wil’s brows lifted. “Well.”

Lelia nodded. “Mull on that. I’ll try to think of a suitable distraction.”

He frowned. “Like what?”

She stood in the doorway and looked back over her shoulder. “The less you know,” she said, winked, and stepped out.

Lelia timed her announcement for when the grand hall was at its fullest.

She stilled her strings, rose, and cleared her throat. With full Bardic projection, she said, “Attention!”

The volume died down. Heads turned. A few stray threads of conversations continued, but not for long.

“As some of you are aware,” she said, “I am the composer and original performer of ‘Today, I Ride’.” She arched a brow. “Or, as some of you call it, ‘That Sendar Song’.” A murmur of recognition—and a few chuckles— rolled through the crowd. “Well, tomorrow I will perform the song—” She lifted the other brow. “—for the last time.”

A collective gasp went through the room. Wil remained stoic.

“I ask that if you all wish to hear it for the last time—from its creator—that you be here tomorrow three candlemarks before midnight.” She bowed deeply. “Thank you.”

A wild clamor followed. The outraged look from Chantil warmed Lelia’s heart. The entourage fluttered and muttered, looking just as distraught as their lady. Lelia had just swiped all the attention, and Chantil could do nothing about it.

If you’re smart, you’ll pretend you suggested it, M’lady, Lelia thought.

Back at the Bell and once again safe from prying eyes and ears, she said, “Sendar’s song is a little less than a quarter candlemark in its full, unedited form. I can get you half if I include one of the parodies.”

“There are parodies?”

“Oh, yes. My personal favorite is ‘Today, I Lunch’.” She giggled. “It’s very respectful.”

“Right.”

“Nothing I haven’t done before. So. Many. Times. I’m sick of it, to be honest.”

“The wages of fame.”

Her lips twitched. “Eh. Got me in to see the queen. I assume it’s how Talamir knew me and why Chantil jumped to hire me.” She took a deep breath. “Speaking of Her Haughtiness . . . I’ll use my Gift. No one will leave that room.”

“The whole room under Bardic Gift?”

“I’m not that good. But Chantil and Andris will be my focus. With them pinned, no one’s going to leave.”

“Might . . . actually work.”

“Good.” She stood up. “Tomorrow, then.”

“Tomorrow,” he agreed.

Lelia had her hand on the door to the Herald’s wing when she heard the hiss of something swinging through the air.

Having spent years being hammered on by a large and skilled ex-captain of the Karsite army had its merits: when Lelia heard things hissing toward her, her first instinct was to duck. She dropped her weight, shed her packs, and rolled off to the side. She sprung up again, facing whatever had been swinging at where she’d been standing.

She saw a nothing that was something—black clothes, black gloves, black hood and half- mask. The black-clad nothing lunged at her with what looking like a club, taking another two-handed strike at her face. Lelia stumbled backward, opened her mouth, and screamed with full Bardic Gift, “Stop!”

Her attacker staggered in place.

Lelia jumped forward and landed with bone-crunching force on her assailant’s foot.

A clunk followed the howl as the club dropped. Lelia crouched and came up swinging the discarded weapon; her assailant’s ribs cracked like greenwood.

The figure issued an ear- piercing shriek, turned—and ran.

“Oh, no!” Lelia yelled, brandishing her new weapon. “Get back here you ba—guh!”

Her own pack fouled her. One moment she was on her feet, the next she sprawled on the pathway, tangled in books and leather, the club bouncing merrily away. The sound of footfalls receded. By the time she regained her feet, she was alone.

“Gods damn it,” she whispered.

Somehow, she made it up to Lyle’s room and lit the hearth with shaking hands. The warm familiarity of her brother’s quarters kept her from curling up into a hysterical sobbing ball. She locked and barred every window and door, shivering despite the warmth of the fire.

Wil heard a knock early the next morning. He stumbled out of bed to find the Bard on the other side of his door. “You look—”

“Got attacked,” she said wearily. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“What?”

She told him with monosyllabic sentences and a demonstrative stomp. She showed him the short, lead-weighted stick of wood she’d turned on her attacker’s ribs. She hadn’t seen a face. But she also hadn’t told anyone.

She did, however, tell him where she’d been staying.

“The Herald’s wing?” He struggled to keep his voice level.

She blinked. “Everyone knows Lyle’s my brother.”

:I, uh, forgot to mention that’s where she was staying, didn’t I?: Vehs managed to sound sheepish.

:You’re worse than me at being sneaky,: Wil thought. “Why didn’t you come and get me?” he asked her.

“Very wary after near-death experience. Long walk. No magic horse.”

“Lelia!”

“ ’Sokay. Not hurt.” Her eyes drifted shut. “Need sleep. Just a candlemark. Here okay?” Her eyes opened again, pleading.

He pointed to the bed. “Go.”

She patted his cheek. “Good Herald.”

The Bard curled up on his bed, dragging the covers over her. Snores drifted up from her a moment later.

Wil picked up the club. His gut twisted.

“Hellfires,” he muttered.

Wil scanned the crowd, feeling a rising level of annoyance and frustration as he watched the countess dance gaily to Lelia’s composition. Not a sign of pain or a limp.

The room was packed, stifling with heat despite it being (nearly) the middle of winter. The only reason Wil spotted the countess was that she’d dressed like a peacock that had been doused in rainbow- hued pitch and set ablaze, a gesture he took to be overcompensation for Lelia stealing her glory.

Lelia gestured him over and whispered, “Time now.”

He nodded. “I’ll get you that right away, ma’am,” he said as he straightened, turned, and strode off.

“Ladies and gentlelords!” Lelia’s voice boomed over the crowd, rolling out like a banner. “Who wants to hear a story about Valdemar’s greatest king?”

Wil breathed more freely when he got into the corridor and away from the crush of people and the roaring cheers. Servants jostled past, babbling about whats- her-name and the Sendar-song. Someday, he realized, he would need to ask her to play it for him.

The wide corridor beyond the great hall and kitchens echoed, utterly deserted. He tried to be quiet, but the farther he went, the more urgently his Gift nudged him, twisting his gut into harder and tighter knots. The need to get there overwhelmed the lesser need to be silent.

He turned a corner. His destination—possibly his destiny—came into view. A terrible notion slid over him—what if the door was locked?

Then I will break it down, he thought grimly.

He touched the doorknob. It turned with a click, opening on a room lit by a single lantern. A wan, familiar face floated in the inky darkness. Something metal gleamed.

Wil’s insides gave one final, painful, all-too-familiar lurch—

Not now!

Knife. Blood. Silver settings, empty of gems. Crossbow.

Wait—crosswhat?

As Wil staggered under the weight of Foresight, he heard the snick of a quarrel being fired.

The enraptured audience stood motionless before Lelia as she stretched her Gift, her attention utterly focused on the count, the countess, and her entourage of—

Where’s Einan? Lelia thought.

Her fingers continued strumming even as her thoughts turned frantic.

Where is he?

Einan fired the crossbow cradled in his arms just as Wil’s vision drove him to his knees. The bolt slammed into the wood paneling behind him, raining splinters into his hair.

Wil drew his long-knife. Einan swore and struggled to rise from the settee he’d been reclining on. Wil tackled him to the floor and, on a wild guess, punched him in the ribs.

The bones yielded easily. Einan screamed.

Handy Gift, Foresight.

“Heyla,” Wil said, at a loss for words. “That wasn’t very nice.”

Einan’s lips pulled back, showing his teeth. “You—displease—her.” He coughed, then drew himself up, and spat at Wil.

Wil flinched and jerked back for just a second—all the time the steward needed. A dirk appeared in his hand from a holster on his wrist.

“Chantil!” he shrieked, and rammed it into his own throat.

Blood painted the walls and Wil. Einan expired, gurgling his lady’s name.

“His neck?” Lelia said, toying with a silvery pendant dangling about her own throat.

Wil nodded from the edge of his bed—the real one, in his room in the Heraldic wing.

“Einan was Chantil’s childhood friend. Low-class family. Couldn’t marry her, so became her steward.” Wil rubbed his eyes. He’d been debriefing for candlemarks since last night. Sleep had not been possible. “We found journals and . . . madness doesn’t begin to cover half of it. Pages about how much he adored Chantil, how perfect she was, how the people who served her didn’t deserve her. Including her husbands.” He pointed at her. “You, too.”

Lelia grimaced.

“He followed you home every night. Palace Guards keep records of visitors, but since he was the Tindale steward, no one questioned him being there. Einan was convinced you were a Herald in disguise.”

She gaped. “What?”

“The irony is really not lost on us.”

“What?”

“You were staying in the Heraldic wing.”

“But—everyone knows—”

“Not everyone, it seems.”

“Oh.”

Wil rubbed his face. “Found the jewelry under the floorboards of Einan’s bedroom. Empty settings. Chantil was flabbergasted.”

“Would have loved to see that.”

“Heh.”

“In retrospect, she’s not that bad a person.” Lelia shrugged. “Still a snob, but—not a murderer.”

Wil nodded. “Sometimes, people aren’t what they appear to be.”

:Oh?: Vehs said dryly. :What philosopher’s memoir did you dredge that from?:

:Hush, you.:

Wil yawned, his eyes drooping. “Tired. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize for doing your job.” She stood. “So, what next?”

“ ’Nother Circuit, probably. Work’s never done.”

She smiled. “Valdemar first.”

“Yeah.”

She bent forward and kissed his forehead. “I spoke to Valdemar. She said to sleep. It’s her Midwinter gift to you.”

He cracked a smile. “Thanks.”

“No problem. Goodbye.”

“Good night,” he yawned back.

Before he dropped off, Wil thought it nice when she kissed him.

Lelia sang a word, the sound echoing across Companion’s Field.

A white form broke off from the herd and trotted toward where she waited at the fence, an apple in her outstretched hand.

“Midwinter gift for you,” she said as Vehs delicately nipped the fruit from her palm. The Companion chewed, then bent and touched his nose to the pack at her feet.

“The stories call,” she said. “Evendim, if it matters. Rumors of half-hawk men there.” She stood up on tip-toe and kissed his cheek. “Keep him safe.”

Vehs shook his mane and stamped his hoof. A gesture of frustration? It didn’t matter anyway, even if it was. She had songs to sing.

The Companion watched her as she walked through the frosty grass toward the gates, whistling as she went.

Wil hummed to himself on his way to Lyle’s quarters. He lifted his fist to knock—

:She left,: Vehs interrupted.

Wil froze. :What?:

Vehs told him.

:This time of year?: Wil thought.

:Madness, I know.:

:Wait—you and the Bard—talk?:

:Of course not. She talked to me. And I’m the one who suggested her, remember?: Vehs’s mental voice danced with amusement. :Jealous?:

Wil thought that a very stupid question, and expressed as much.

:In other news,: Vehs said when he was done, :Kyril wants to meet about your next Circuit.:

:Where?: Evendim, perhaps?

:Sorrows. The barbarians. . . . : Softly, Vehs added, :I’m sorry.:

Wil shook himself. :Eh? What for?: He shrugged. :I go where the Crown wills.:

Wil walked in silence down the stairs, rubbing his forehead lightly as he went.

Wounded Bird

By Michael Z. Williamson

Michael Z. Williamson was born in the UK and raised in Canada and the US. A twenty- four-year veteran of the US Army and US Air Force combat engineers, he is married to a reserve Army combat photographer who is a civilian graphic artist. They have too many cats and two children who have learned how to fight anything, including zombies, from the age of four.

Women only wore dresses in Mirr. Riga had compromised with a knee- length tunic of wine silk with crimson and silver embroidery and beading over her trews. It stuck out in vivid contrast to the somber blacks and whites of the natives. She acceded somewhat to their law and wore a kerchief over her flaxen hair, but her warrior’s braid hung below, rather than loose under a long headdress like the locals.

Not that it mattered to anyone but her. Father and Erki knew her, and the locals would never regard her as anything other than a girl. She saw how the locals treated women: as servants.

Jesrin, for example, serving her minted tea, was lean and healthy looking and seemed rather bright. She’d never develop as anything here, though. She was unnumbered and unlettered and probably not much of a cook, just a serving girl. Riga would have liked to talk to her at least, but she’d have to go to the kitchen to do so. Women didn’t talk in front of men. Even if Riga might, Jesrin certainly wouldn’t. Riga thought about the kitchen, but that was a concession she didn’t want to make. She was not a servant. She was a trader and a warrior.

Jesrin moved on with more tea for the Amar, the local trading lord. She hesitated around his gesticulating arms, then moved to pour. He changed his motion just in time to catch the spout of the samovar and deliver a big splash of liquid to the lush woolen rug the men sat on.

“Clumsy wench!”

Riga twitched as Amar Rabas backhanded Jesrin. The blow was hard enough to stagger her, but she flailed through contortions to avoid dropping the silver tea set. Riga could only imagine the penalty if the girl did that.

A moment later she wasn’t sure she could imagine. The slight girl shrieked as her ankle twisted, but she laid the tray down carefully on the marble flagstones behind her. Not a drop spilled.

However, Rabas drew a heavy cord from somewhere and laid into her, the knotted end thunking heavily right through her thick clothes. The girl writhed and twitched, but she let out only whimpers. Presumably crying was punishable, too.

Father gave Riga a warning glance, and she nodded once, her face blank, while inside she burned with rage. It was not their business to interfere, though he obviously didn’t like it either. Riga’s brother Erki fought to keep his own temper. He was three years younger, though, only fourteen. What a lesson on foreign cultures for him.

It was worse for her because Riga was a trained warrior. Had the Amar swung at her like that, she’d have broken his arm and then sliced his throat. And, of course, been beaten to death or hanged for her trouble. It just drove home that fighting was not always the answer.

It also drove home that she despised this southern city and its culture. In the week they’d been here, the Amar had escalated his hospitality, gifts, and praise every day. He’d also escalated his brutality and rudeness to his servants and his own hires.

She knew she had to calm down, so she looked around their setting again. The walls were faced in gleaming marble. Wrought iron and bronze rails, hooks, and mountings adorned the stairs and walls. The doors, posts, and lintels were carved elaborately, some of them with scenes that made her blush. Apparently, denied other outlets for their energy, it went into suggestive figures.

While the small fleet of five ships—both of theirs and three others belonging to distant cousins—were being packed with valuable spices, silk, and teas, Riga really wasn’t sure it was morally worth it. Mirr was pretty. Mirr was also a filthy dump as far as attitudes, decency, and anything beyond decadently carved stone and flowers went.

“Amar Rabas,” Father interrupted diplomatically. When the man looked up from his flogging, he continued, “We are grateful for your hospitality. It is time to retire to our inn for the day. I hope to see you again tomorrow, as we prepare to leave.”

The Amar rose, and the girl crawled to her knees and bowed low. He glanced at her, snapped, “Get to the kitchen,” then turned back to his guests. “Of course, Gunde. May I host you for dinner tomorrow? A feast in farewell before you eat ship rations?”

“My son and I would be honored,” Father said. Of course, Riga was only a daughter and was not mentioned here, any more than a dog would be.

They bowed all around and departed, as the girl scurried limping away, taking the tray and towel with her.

Once outside and out of earshot, Riga muttered, “I think I’d prefer ship biscuits and salted meat to hospitality such as his.”

“They are not a nice people,” Father agreed. “But we need the trading stop. If we could transport only across the lake back home and stay solvent, I’d do that. We need proper trading voyages now and then, though. It’s also good learning for you two.”

“We need to learn that some people are pure evil?” Erki asked.

“The Amar is brutal even by our warrior standards,” Father said, “but he is not evil. At least their trade is honest, and tariffs fair. They’ve held off Miklamar’s encroachments so far. If you want evil, you remember the refugees fleeing that murderous thug.”

“I do,” Erki said as he rubbed his stubby thumb. So did Riga. She vividly remembered him losing half that thumb when the two youths had had to be warriors and guides for those refugees.

“Tonight is our last night in the inn,” Father said. “We’ll remain aboard ship, under tent, until we leave.”

“Oh, good,” Riga said. “I prefer our tent to their opulence. It’s friendlier.” Nothing about this city was friendly except the other traders and embassies. Of course, they weren’t of this city. Riga wore heavy clothes despite the mild weather but no sword. Erki and Father carried swords. They were her protectors. Her status: none. At home she wore her cat-jeweled sword, and no one would be silly enough to ask if she knew its use.

The feast was not a happy event. It could have been, but . . .

Riga had no complaints about the food. She didn’t like being behind a curtain at a second, remote table set up for women, where she ate with the wives and servants. She didn’t like getting what were basically the leavings from the men. The entertainment would be better if she could actually see it, rather than just hear hints of it past the curtain. The food was wonderful, though, redolent with spices and rich and savory. The manner took getting used to. One formed rice into balls, or tore pieces of bread, and just reached in to scoop up the saucy mess.

Even at the women’s table, there was a hierarchy. The senior wife sat at the far end. Her two junior wives flanked her, and the wives and concubine of two other guests sat down from there. Riga guessed her position at a table end was of some status, and two daughters flanked her. Between were the servants.

A warm, sweet smell seemed to indicate dessert, or at least a dessert. There’d been two so far. Jesrin served the men, then came through to serve the women.

As she leaned past Riga to put down a platter of pastry, her layered gown slipped, revealing some shoulder.

Riga almost recoiled in horror at what she glimpsed. That delicate shoulder was a mass of blood blisters, bruises and welts. Their color indicated they were healing, but he’d laid into this girl horribly.

Steeling herself, she said nothing, made no acknowledgement—servants weren’t people here—and ate quietly. The food was good. It would have been twice as good if she’d been granted the courtesy of eating with the men. She reminded herself that her own people regarded her as a warrior. No insults here could change that.

Of course, Father had asked that she diplomatically not discuss any of her “manly” skills. While she knew weaving and a little of spinning, she knew much more of boatkeeping and lading, numbers, letters, horse care, and maneuver. The women chatted amiably about textiles and art, and Riga just nodded and smiled.

Jesrin slipped back through a few minutes later, came over, and discreetly handed Riga a slip of parchment, which Riga just as discreetly opened in her lap and read.

“We are staying here tonight. Your room will be across the hall from mine—GundeFather.”

If there was one thing Riga didn’t want to do, it was stay here, beneath her status. She momentarily raged inside.

It wasn’t just being treated as an inferior. It was that it didn’t matter what her status was, didn’t matter her skills. She could run the business herself if need be. She lacked Father’s decades, but she had a grounding in all the basics and plenty of her own travels and deals and war. But here, just being born female meant that she was beneath a horse, even beneath a dog, and wouldn’t even be treated with contempt. She just wouldn’t be treated at all. The offered hospitality was for Father and Erki, not her. Her room was a mere courtesy to Father, otherwise they’d stick her in a hole with the servants, she was sure.

After that, she withdrew completely from the conversation and just steamed silently, until Jesrin led her up the marble stairs, long after the men had retreated, to a frilly, dainty, girly room. It was very lavish, of course. See how well the Amar treats even a daughter of a trader?

“If you need,” Jesrin said, “That cord will ring a bell below. I’ll hurry right up.”

“You won’t sleep yourself?” Riga asked.

Jesrin seemed confused by Riga’s accent, or perhaps the question itself.

“Of course, I’ll wake up. It’s my duty to serve. If I’m not available, then Aysa will come.”

“Thank you, though I’ll be fine. You’ve been so gracious.”

Jesrin replied with a demure bow. “Thank you, all I do is on behalf of my lord.”

Riga couldn’t wait, so asked, “Jesrin, would you like me to look at your shoulder? I may have a salve that will help.”

“Oh, Miss Riga, you are gracious, no. The house-mistress is taking care of it. I will be fine.” The poor girl seemed embarrassed and ashamed just to discuss it.

Girl. Jesrin was easily a year older than Riga’s seventeen. Yet Riga was a woman among her people, able to run her household, sign contracts, travel freely or as mistress of a mission. Jesrin seemed younger, frailer, helpless. She could manage any number of chores, but she had no voice, was illiterate, a glorified pet. Riga could give orders to laborers and warriors. Jesrin wouldn’t know how even if she could.

With nothing else to offer, Riga said, “Then I shall retire. I hope to see you in the morning, and please rest. You’ve made me most comfortable, thank you.”

“A blessing on you.” Jesrin bowed and withdrew with what looked like a happy smile. It made Riga shudder.

The next morning, Riga awoke to sun peeking through chiseled piercework in the shutters. The weather was wonderfully mild. The bed was silken over feathers, with a very fine cotton sheet.

Riga would gladly give it all up to keep her status.

A breakfast of fruit and pastry sat on a tray near the door. She snagged a couple of fat strawberries and a roll, partly to quiet her stomach and partly to be polite to Jesrin and the other servants. She didn’t care what the Amar thought and was pretty sure he wouldn’t even ask how she’d fared. She rebraided her hair, threw a scarf over it to appease local customs, and opened the door.

No one was around, so she crept across and tapped on what she hoped was Father’s door. She could hear his voice, and Erki’s, and that brightened her mood a lot.

He swung the door open and said, “Welcome, Daughter! I’m sure you’re dreading returning to the Sea Fox.”

“Oh, yes, very much, Father.” Please get me out of here now, her mind and face said.

Once downstairs, she stood back while Father, Erki, and the Amar exchanged bows. She wasn’t expected to participate, for which she was glad.

A few minutes later they were striding down the broad, dusty street toward the port.

Erki said, “I’ll be glad to eat normal food. I got sick of the rich, fancy stuff very quickly.”

“I enjoyed the food. Not the company. I wish I could have. Jesrin seems like a nice girl,” she said.

“She does. He sent her to my room an hour after bed last night,” Father admitted.

“Oh, Father, you didn’t!” she exclaimed.

“Of course I didn’t,” he replied with a grimace and shiver. “Gods, she’s barely older than you, girl. Ugh.” He cringed again. “I bade her sit and talk for a while, gave her some medicine for the pain and some herbs to help heal. They don’t do that here, either. Herbs are the work of the devils. She wasn’t easy to convince, but I promised her I’d never mention it. Then I made her sleep on the divan. She seemed both grateful and put upon.”

Riga wasn’t sure she parsed that, but no matter. “Thank you,” she replied.

“For what? Not bedding a child? I need no thanks for that.” He sounded annoyed.

“I wish we could help her. Buy her, perhaps?”

Father leaned up and back and met her eyes.

“I know you mean well, but no. Her looks make her highly prized.”

“You could ask,” she said. “I have my share to pledge against the cost.”

He sighed and looked uncomfortable.

“Riga, His Beneficent Excellency was struck by your stature and eyes. He offered me a sack of saffron and your weight in gold for your hand for his son.”

Riga choked and stared wide-eyed. Great gods. That was more than both their ships were worth. They might do that gross business in five years.

Feeling nervous ripples, she asked, “And you told him . . . ?”

“I said you were to be betrothed to a wealthy merchant in our lands, but his offer was most generous and thoughtful. I thanked him for the compliment he paid me as a father and merchant.”

Seeing her sunken expression, he added, “Riga, she’s got good food, a warm bed and shelter. Her lot as a free peasant would be no better in this desert. It would be worse. You can’t save everyone. Remember the birds? And the rabbit?”

Yes, she’d tried to save injured animals when younger.

“You stewed them,” she said accusingly.

“I only stewed them after you tried to save them and they died. They were meant for the pot anyway.”

“I didn’t appreciate it at the time,” she said.

Erki said, “If a Kossaki treated a woman like that, he’d be driven from town in disgrace. It’s a strange place. You should have been treated better, Riga. I’m sorry.”

“It keeps me humble,” she said, trying for self-deprecating humor. Few places gave women the status the Kossaki had. This place, though . . .

“Well, tonight we sleep in linen and wool and fur,” Father said. “We have dried goat and fish, berries and nuts. I’ll see about a stew.”

Erki said, “Let me, Father? I’ll be glad to make us some real food.” He leaned over and added, “And I promise not to cook any stray pets you find, Riga.”

She stuck her tongue out. “You cook. I have to help tally the goods, the tariffs and the port fees. Then Father can sign it and pretend I’m just a dumb girl.”

“I’ll pretend nothing,” he said. “They can assume whatever they wish.”

Under the sail tent, Riga couldn’t sleep. The contrast between the beauty and the evil just seemed to make the evil that much more horrifying.

The girl had been beaten for the slightest of errors, because it “embarrassed” her owner. Then she’d been sent to whore for a guest, while still full of welts and crippling bruises. That was considered redemption here . . . for the Amar.

That thought decided it for her. Riga rolled her quilt off carefully, slipped to the deck, and felt for her boots.

In minutes, she was dressed for her mission, and in a way no woman should dare dress in this city. That made it both joyous and sobering. She could wind up dead for what she planned, even if she didn’t succeed.

Erki was still and undisturbed, and she figured to leave him there. He was handsome even asleep, and she smiled. Then she realized there was one thing she needed him for, if nothing else.

She touched him on the shoulder, and his eyes snapped open.

She held a finger to her lips in a shhh! and beckoned him to join her.

He slipped his feet out and fumbled for clothes and gear. He was always twitchy and energetic, but at least he was silent about it.

He seemed excited, probably because he knew she was up to something. Would he be agreeable when he found out what, though? He matched her choice of dull fighting clothes. When she pointed, he grabbed his sword without hesitation.

A few minutes later, they shimmied over the gunwale and onto the beach. None of the crew were awake or had noticed. Some of them were still in rooms in town, in fact, and would only return in time to push off, she hoped. If they were late . . .

Erki whispered, “What are we doing?”

“We’re going to rescue that servant girl, Jesrin.”

“You haven’t discussed this with Father, have you?” he asked at once.

Damn the boy.

“No,” she admitted. “This is my plan.”

“He’ll thrash us both,” Erki said. “How will that help her?”

“He’ll thrash us because we deserve it,” she said. “That girl got far more than that.”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t help you,” he said. “But how do we keep her from being found?”

With that first part agreed, she started creeping across the beach. “She only has to keep out of sight in our ship. The fleet leaves in the morning. With luck, they won’t even start looking this way by then.”

“If they do, Father might just give us to them. We’ll be endangering everyone.”

“Really. I thought we were warriors and nations quivered at our mention,” she said with contemptuous sarcasm.

“Not as much as they did long past,” Erki said. “Look, I’m still with you.”

“Good, then stop trying to argue me out of it,” she said, because he was right. What she proposed was dangerous, foolish, and could start a war.

She also knew it was the right thing to do.

“I swore my Warrior’s Oath to protect the weak,” she said. “And I didn’t swear that it stopped at the edge of our lands.”

The beach was convenient. The docks proper had activity at all hours, but just a few dozen yards away, few people were about. Only small fishing vessels and the shallow-draft Kossaki trade and warships used the beach. Even when trading, the Kossaki ported like raiders, ready to dart away in moments.

The two youths flitted through from shadow to shadow. Their boots were soft-soled leather. Their dull clothes disappeared into the night. Riga had no sword, but she did have her seachs knife.

She planned to not need it. That would mean their mission had failed. It was the principle, though. Besides, if she did get caught, she wanted them to know she was a warrior.

It also helped her cope with the knowledge that if discovered, she would at the least be publicly beaten with canes and heavily fined. Or rather, Father would be fined. At worst . . .

In far less time than she remembered, they were at the outer wall of the Amar’s residence. The building ran around three sides of a courtyard.

“I know her room is on the left . . .” Riga said.

“Second window from the far end, down that alley.”

She cocked an eyebrow.

“How do you know?”

Erki blushed even in the dark, stuttered, and then said, “She’s very pretty. I watched her go there.”

She had to smile.

“That’s fine. Good lad.” She left it at that. “Lead the way.”

“Right there,” he pointed.

She really hoped he was right. She also hoped that Jesrin was there. If the Amar had her in his bed . . . or even if she was just doing scullery work . . . of course, either would let them return, knowing they’d tried.

Or, more likely, cause me to escalate until we do have a war, Riga thought. She had no illusions about her diplomacy or temper.

The shutter opened to the fourth pea-sized pebble.

Once Jesrin understood their gestures, her eyes grew a foot wide, and she shook her head in horror. They gestured again, come down, come with us. Riga even held up the spare cloak for emphasis.

It took long minutes, while occasional flickers of lamplight in other windows indicated early risers, up to bake breakfast or reach the tide, before the girl nodded assent.

Erki tossed up a coil of thin, strong silk rope, and it took more minutes to explain she should loop it around the center post of the window and run it back down.

Riga was worried if Jesrin was strong enough to slide down a rope rather than fall, but she managed well enough, though clearly stiff from some beating or other. She bumped the wall and scuffed loose some plaster, which made Riga cringe. Perhaps she was being too cautious. There was no indication anyone else had noticed. She was thankful they didn’t like dogs here. Dogs would have heard and smelled them long before.

The seconds were hours long as Jesrin slipped down the slender rope. Her layered dress was not practical and would be abraded to shreds before she reached the ground.

Then she slipped and fell. Erki and Riga both rushed forward and caught her, and she convulsed in agony at their hands on her beaten back. The fall had scraped her knuckles and forehead, and she leaned over in the dust and vomited, twitched, lay still for a moment, then twitched again as she woke up. Through it all, she barely uttered a sound.

Erki snatched the rope down as Riga gingerly helped her to her feet. With the shutters ajar and the rope recovered, there was no obvious sign of departure. But it was early, and Father would awaken soon himself. They had to move.

The girl meekly donned the offered hood and tied the cloak around her neck, wincing as even that weight touched her abused flesh. She’d pass as Kossaki from a distance, but her underdress was clearly servant class, and her poise was as submissive as Riga’s was challenging. Still, that shouldn’t matter.

“This way,” Riga said, and led the way. A moment later, Erki grabbed her shoulder and stepped in front.

Oh. Right. Male must lead. She flushed in anger, embarrassment, and frustration. Still, that’s why she’d asked him along, and he was doing his part well, the stout boy.

They were five streets away when a watchman came around the corner, right into their faces.

“Who are you?” he asked. Riga could puzzle out the words, but she couldn’t speak. Had Erki paid attention to their lessons?

And then she knew why she loved her brother, annoying as he could be. He stepped forward, as he did for any problem, and showed no reluctance.

“Harad of the Kossaki,” he lied, “and my sisters. I return to my uncle’s ship.”

“It is very late.” The man spoke simply for them, but his tone made it clear he wanted an explanation.

“My sister took sick and had to stay with friends. We are lucky your gods saw fit to make her healthy in time.”

It was very rude to look at a woman’s face here, but this man was an official. He looked as if he was considering doing so, and he stared at their feet.

She’s wearing sandals, not boots, Riga realized. Explain them as locally supplied? But she couldn’t talk, and would Erki grasp it?

Under her cloak, she gripped the hilt of her seachs. In about five heartbeats, he was going to find out why she was called “Sworddancer,” even if all she had was a knife.

He looked at Erki again, said, “A blessing on you,” and turned away.

Riga exhaled. Jesrin whimpered. Erki didn’t twitch at all, and he led the way forward.

It was definitely near dawn, and gray, as they reached the beach.

Jesrin spoke at last. “We go on your ship?”

“Yes, quickly,” Riga said, gripped her elbow carefully—it might be bruised—and hurried her along.

Some crew were about, securing the ships for sea. The tents would be down soon, then hoisted back up as sails. Luckily, no one paid much attention to three youths.

Erki bounded catlike over the gunwale and pulled at Jesrin’s hands as Riga shoved at her hips. The girl winced. Beaten there, too. But it took practice or help to board the outward curve of a kanr.

In the dim twilight, Father was visible at the stern, checking the steering oar and ballast. Before he turned, Riga shoved Jesrin down behind a pair of barrels.

“Erki,” she said, and stood as he threw a heavy, smelly tarp atop the girl.

He stood and whispered, “Don’t move at all until I say so.”

Father came back, moving easily around netted crates and barrels. He didn’t look or act his age, and the ship was his domain.

“Where have you been?” he demanded crossly.

“I took a last look at the tiled market to the south,” she said. “It’s so pretty.” She tried hard to make that sound honest. It was something she might have done . . . four years before. Would Father catch that?

“You’ll have cleaning duty until I say otherwise. Both of you,” he replied. He looked relieved and annoyed but not angry.

“Sorry, Father,” she said.

“Yes, Father,” Erki agreed.

“Stow the ropes, help with the sail bindings, and get ready to depart. We have a good wind to speed us north by west.”

“At once,” she agreed. Good. Shortly they’d be away from this beautiful hell.

The incoming tide made the ship sway and bob, and the wind and the poles inched them down the sand. All at once they shifted, dragged, shifted again, and Sea Fox was back in her realm. The crew jumped to the oars and sculled for deeper water. They were free peasants, hired and paid, and Riga would bet them against any slave rowers. As free men they’d also fight for their master and their pay. Yet another reason the Kossaki traded unmolested.

The ships were just forming up in line to head out to sea, when a bright yellow harbor boat headed for them, with a toot of a brass horn. They all stopped their departure, keeping station in the lapping waves to avoid beaching again.

The boat drew alongside, and some official or other in gleaming white silk accepted a hand aboard. Behind him was the watchman from the night before, and Riga’s nerves rippled cold.

“May I help you?” Father asked. “I believe our tariffs are in order.” He held out a leather book with a stamped sheet from the revenue agent. He’d paid the tariff Riga had calculated and tossed in ten percent as “a gift for the temple,” which meant for the agent’s pocket. All should be in order. Though Riga knew that was not the issue in question.

“My apologies for disturbing you,” the man said with mock politeness. “The Amar sends his regards and his sadness at losing a fine servant girl.”

“We brought no servant girl,” Father said. “The only woman on my ships is my daughter. Grom has his wife and girl child aboard his ship. Ranuldr has his wife and two daughters.”

Erki stood alongside Riga. They’d had the same lesson, that to stand firm was better than to cower. Here they were side by side, and would the guard know, or mention it if he did?

Erki had changed clothes, so he would not be apparent at once. Would the man recognize Riga, though? But no local man should look at a woman. He’d seen her earlier, but had he “seen” her? She was also in shipboard trews and tunic now, leaning on a rigging hook as if it were a spear. She stared back at him, trying to look quizzical and faintly bored. He studied her, but it was all pretense. He really hadn’t noticed the women. There’d been no real reason to at the time, and he wouldn’t admit so now. Riga didn’t blame him, knowing how the Amar might respond.

He looked hard at Erki, but without the cloak and in light, the boy looked more a man. He also didn’t show any expression at all, though she could sense the nervous shivers.

“She was with a young boy last night. What about your boys?”

“Only Erki here,” Father said. “He was on watch last night. I expect your own shore patrol will remember him. There are a number of other young men, though it depends on what you mean by ‘boy.’ ”

Was Father lying as a matter of course, to get this over with? Or did he know and was covering for them? His words were unbothered.

The watchman looked Erki over but didn’t finger him. Good so far.

The official asked, “Which girl was sick and stayed in town?”

“Not mine,” Father said. “I suppose it could have been Ranuld’s eldest girl. She’s fifteen. All ours are accounted for, though, we’re not missing any.”

Of course they weren’t missing any. Father was deliberately misunderstanding. My people are in order. Do you believe your own are not?

“All your women are as they should be?” They looked uncomfortable. The Kossaki ships had canvas weather shields at the rear, and little privacy. It was understood that one didn’t stare or annoy a woman even bathing or changing, but that was certainly not understood here. The very subject made them cringe and shy away. Inside, Riga grinned. They were going to back off, right now.

“There are few enough that I can count to six,” Father said with a grin. Riga twitched. Would he insist on seeing them all?

“I will inspect your cargo and your manifest then, as a courtesy.”

Riga grimaced as Father said, “If you wish.” Everyone knew something was up at this point. They were all just pretending it wasn’t.

He started at the bow, peering through the nets and checking the crates for stamps and seals. All were as they should be, and of course he knew that. He moved slowly back to a pile of barrels staked down, containing figs, tea, and spices. Past the mast and the bundles of sail lashed to the spar.

Father said, “I don’t wish to rush you, but we have five ships and tide to keep. We’ve always dealt in good faith.”

“I’ll just work my way back and be done, then,” the official said, with a false frown.

“Be quick about it. I feel sorry for the Amar, but I have my own dramas, and I don’t share mine with the help.”

Was Father trying to cause the man to search in detail? That comment flustered him, and he checked a barrel’s number very carefully.

“You might want to check under that tarp. It’s a prime place to stash an escaped servant girl. I don’t find my own daughter enough trouble, so I try to pick one up in every port.”

Clutching his tally board, the man strode forward again in a careful, dignified fashion, swung over into his boat, and indicated to the rowers to leave.

He turned back, looked at Father and said, “Thank you for your help.”

“You are most welcome. I hope the Amar finds this girl and that she hasn’t fallen among those who would shame her or him. I cherish his hospitality and trade.”

“I will tell him,” the official said, beckoning the guard to join him as he sat down on a thwart. “Good travels to you, and a blessing.”

“A blessing on you, and the Amar, and your king,” Father said.

As they rowed away, he turned and ordered, “Pick up the speed. We’re not earning money to row like a holiday ship.” He seemed quite relaxed and good natured.

Riga wanted to run back and check under the tarp. She knew Jesrin was alive, though, and silence was a good thing. It might be night before she could come out. It might even be five days and port before she admitted the girl’s presence. She had silly notions of sneaking her ashore with a few coins somewhere she could find good work, though she knew the girl, like any injured creature, would need support for a bit.

She stood her post, and helped tighten the sail as they gained room to maneuver, and the five ships spread into a longer line for travel.

They cleared the headland and entered open ocean, the deeper swells swaying Sea Fox, twisting and torquing her. She was designed for that, though, and surged across the waves.

Father came past, checking the rigging. “How’s the servant girl?” he asked quite casually.

Riga knew better than to lie. “Alive and quiet,” she said at once.

“This is the same servant girl we discussed, I assume.”

“Yes, she is. Jesrin. Badly bruised in body and spirit.”

“Damn it, Daughter, this is worse than an injured goose. You can’t save every helpless creature in the world! Especially at a risk of war.”

“Of course not,” she said.

Then she smiled at him, a challenging smile that would yield a flogging in Mirr, and perhaps start a duel in Kossaki lands. It was the smile of a merchant and warrior among her peers.

“But I can save this one.”

Defending the Heart

By Kate Paulk

Kate Paulk pretends to be a mild mannered software quality analyst by day and allows her true evil author nature through for the short time between finishing with the day job and falling over. She lives in semirural Pennsylvania with her husband, two bossy cats, and her imagination. The last is the hardest to live with. Her latest short story sale, “Night Shifted,” is in DAW’s anthology,

Better Off Undead

.

“What are you doing to That Damn Kitten?” Jem asked from under the tree, his voice laced with laughter.

Ree lay stretched out on a tree branch almost too small to support his weight. With his toe claws dug in, he stretched his hand as far as he could toward a kitten maybe ten weeks old who, in the way of his kind, kept just out of reach and fluffed its white and gray fur into a big dandelion puff while emitting ceaseless, plangent meows.

Because Ree was a hobgoblin, changed in the magic storms into something with cat claws, cat eyes, and the brown fur and tail of a rat, he heard the kitten’s cries in a range humans couldn’t hear. Besides, the kitten’s mother, That Other Damn Cat, had been adding her own increased-range pleas to Ree to save her baby.

Damn kitten. Ree stretched his hand to the cowering furball, who, of course, retreated farther out of the way. There was only so far Ree could stretch and he’d be cursed if he was going any further on the frail end of the branch. He tried to make the peculiar chirping sound That Other Damn Cat used to call her kittens.

Beneath the tree, Jem laughed. He’d grown a lot over the last year—was now the height of a man and had blond fuzz on his upper lip. His voice was changing, too, to adult man ranges. Just thinking about it made Ree’s heart turn in him.

He’d been just a hobgoblin, like other hobgoblins. Sometimes he’d been more animal than human. He thought if he’d not found Jem, if Jem hadn’t been so convinced Ree was human, in time Ree might have forgotten he was human, himself. He might have become one of the wild hobgoblins—a beast and nothing more.

But he’d saved Jem’s life, and Jem . . . Ree liked to think it was love, or some form of it, and that they would be together their whole lives. But they’d met really young. Though neither was that sure of his age—not exactly—they’d been thirteen or fourteen. That had been two summers ago, and now Jem was changing.

Ree knew, from when he’d been a human among humans, that when young men changed, a lot of things changed about them. Not just their appearance and their voices, but their manner, their ways, and sometimes their hearts too. As for Ree . . . who knew what happened to hobgoblins? He didn’t think he would change much.

Looking away from Jem, he turned back to concentrate on the kitten in a storm of flustered mother- catlike meowing. Or at least he hoped it was mother- cat like. I’m probably telling the poor thing I want to eat it, he thought.

Jem’s laughter wasn’t helping. Oh, Ree imagined he looked very funny, but all the same, if one of the green apples festooning the tree had been within range, he’d have flung it at Jem’s head.

Even so, the kitten didn’t seem put off by the laughter. It looked at Ree with big, rounded eyes, as Ree continued what he hoped were his reassurances of fish and milk for the kitten back at home. For a while it looked as though it would back up yet further, then suddenly it seemed to make up its mind and charged forward, needle-like claws extended. It ran lightning-fast along the branch and leaped atop Ree, bracing itself with claws in the space between Ree’s neck and his shoulders.

Ree’s involuntary shriek only caused the claws to dig in further, and Jem said, now sounding concerned, “Come on down. That branch is too thin for you.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Ree said, shuffling back uncertainly. What did Jem think, exactly? That he wanted to set up a treehouse up here?

Just at that moment there was a crack like thunder, and the branch moved beneath him. On the ground, Jem jumped out of the way and yelled, “Ree, be careful.”

But it was too late for Ree to do anything short of growing wings, and that he’d missed when the changes had come.

The branch didn’t break, it just peeled off the tree, Ree and all. His world tilted down, and then he was holding onto the branch and there were other branches flying past him as he fell. He tried to grab onto the passing branches with hands and feet, all the while trying to secure the kitten with yet another hand.

Even as That Damn Kitten dug its claws hard into the securing hand, it occurred to Ree that it might have been a good idea to have been caught near an octopus when the changes came. Failing wings, he could have used another complement of limbs.

He landed on the ground, still atop the branch. The force of impact jarred his brain and made him dizzy. Jem was there, trying to help him up. Jem was taller than Ree by a full head now, but the look in his eyes was the same as it had been two years ago, when he’d decided to cast his lot in with Ree and that they’d stay together come what may. “Are you all right?”

Jem’s gaze was balm to Ree’s heart. He brought the screaming kitten down off his shoulders and put up a hand to prevent Jem reaching for it. “Don’t touch it. That Damn Kitten is full of needles.” He put it carefully on the ground, where it ran to rub on That Other Damn Cat, who hovered nearby and who gave Ree a reproachful glance.

Ree sucked on the claw wounds on his fingers. “Gee, I rescue her baby and she glares at me. You’d think she’d treat me like a hero.”

Jem sidled close, smiling but only half joking. “I think you’re a hero. Isn’t that enough for you?”

“Well . . . it just might be, if only—” He stopped. He stopped because having raised his head, he’d caught sight of something against the sky. But it was a good thing he stopped, because what could he tell Jem? If only I weren’t sure you’d grow past and away from me and forget all that lay between us?

“What is it?” Ree never could hide anything from Jem: the younger boy caught his expressions before anyone else would.

Ree pointed. “See smoke, up there? It’s not cooking fires. It’s darker, and it doesn’t look right. I think it’s a house burning. And look, there’s another one farther off. That means soldiers.” His chest and stomach tightened. Soldiers meant trouble. He didn’t know if it was the Empire coming back to make sure everyone paid their taxes and to take away the boys who were old enough to be in the army, or if it was one of the bandit lords they’d heard about.

It didn’t matter. Either would kill him, just as they’d kill the wild hobgoblins that haunted the forest. That was the law, and maybe it was right. After all, who knew what would happen to Ree when Jem grew up and moved into the world of men and left Ree behind, alone with the beasts?

If there were soldiers coming, Garrad had to know. He was the farmer here—an irritable old man whose temper protected a heart big enough to take in a city waif and a hobgoblin when Ree and Jem had arrived two winters ago.

If they hadn’t found Garrad just in time and if he hadn’t been willing to shelter them on his farm, Jem would have died of a horrible persistent cough he’d caught after they’d left Jacona. To be sure, Garrad would probably have died too, as he’d injured himself in a fall and been unable to get up and look after himself. But all the same, even in that situation, Ree knew most humans would have turned him out. Garrad taking to Jem was easy. Jem looked enough like him he might have been his grandson. Taking to Ree, though . . . what human in his right mind would want to offer shelter to a creature part rat, part cat and part human?

Now Ree and Jem ran to find him. Jem had the advantage over Ree, his legs having gotten much longer, loping over a cluck of chicks pecking at the dirt and barely avoiding a head on collision with one of the goats. Ree followed behind, his claws digging into the dirt, the farm animals scampering away from his path.

Garrad was in the barn with the cows. When the boys had come, there had been two cows and an old horse and not much else. But Ree and Jem had had to kill some of the wild hobgoblins to defend the farm. It wasn’t something they talked about. They just did it. They patrolled the forest and kept the bad or stupid hobgoblins away and killed the ones who wouldn’t obey.

The hobgoblin furs fetched handsome prices, as did the herbs and mushrooms they gathered in the forest where villagers from the nearby hamlet of Three Rivers were afraid to go. Now they had four milk cows, an unruly herd of goats, and a donkey. The donkey had come straying in from the forest, arrived from who knew where. She was a yearling, wounded and weak. Perhaps Jem had thought she was like him, because he’d nursed her to health, and now he harnessed her to the cart he took down to the village once a week to sell milk and cheese and herbs.

Garrad looked like a prosperous farmer, in clothes they’d had made from bought cloth and not homespun. And they looked like a prosperous farmer’s grandsons. In all except Ree’s unfortunate modifications.

“Granddad,” Jem shouted as he came into the dim, cooler barn, which smelled of clean animals and fresh milk.

Garrad was sitting on the milking stool, milking one of the cows. White liquid splashed into a tin bucket. He looked up and frowned at them. He always frowned, but Ree had learned to read the expressions, and this one was alarm. “What is it?” His hand reached for the stick that rested near him. Jem had carved it to help Garrad walk when they’d arrived, but now it was used mostly as a pointing tool and a weapon. “What happened?”

They told him. The smoke. Soldiers. Garrad’s thin, hawkish face grew grim. “Well, then,” he said. “If they’re coming they will come. There ain’t much we can do, is there? Not like we can pack up the farm, the animals, and those damn cats and all and hide out of their way.”

“I can go to the forest,” Ree said. He’d deliberately hung back, in the shadows of the barn, behind Jem a bit and out of Garrad’s line of sight. “And stay there, you know? It might make it easier for you.” Easier surely, if the soldiers didn’t think they were harboring a wild hobgoblin, which was as much a capital crime as being a hobgoblin. Not that Ree had ever quite understood how it could be a crime when he’d had no control over it.

Garrad snorted and turned back to his milking, his movement so jerky that the cow shifted her back leg and gave a low, surprised moo. “You cutting out on your family, boy?” Garrad said, as he gentled the cow. “Yeah, you might have to hide when the soldiers come, but not in the forest. Stay nearby, boy, we might need you. Or don’t you care?”

There were no words to say how much Ree cared, so he simply said, “All right,” and went to muck out the goats.

Peering through the narrow air slits high up in the barn let Ree see Garrad leaning on his walking stick so he looked as helpless and inoffensive as a cranky old man could, and Jem pretended to support him all the way across the field. Ree didn’t think it would help.

It had taken the soldiers three days to get to the farm, and each day smoke pillars had risen up from the valley bringing with them a smell of unclean smoke. When he climbed the trees near the farm, Ree knew the soldiers were burning out places. And the column in which they moved grew, with long lines of people tied up behind the soldiers. Slaves or prisoners, didn’t matter which. Even children were tied up and dragged along, little ones, barely able to walk.

Garrad snapped at Ree when Ree couldn’t eat and said they would be all right. But it seemed to Ree no better than a magic incantation, and everyone knew magic wasn’t much good anymore.

Jem and Garrad approached the soldiers—Garrad doing his best to limp, Jem supporting him solicitously. The leader of the soldiers didn’t dismount. He stayed atop his big gray mare, glaring down at them like a man who knows a put-on when he sees it.

He looked like one of those big mean bastards, built solid, like Garrad’s outhouse, and he sized up Jem and Garrad like a trader checking furs. Or—and the older memory made Ree swallow and wipe his hands on his pants—like some of Ree’s mother’s customers when they looked at him, back when he’d still been human. Before she’d shooed him away to avoid his being sold to some of those that preferred boys.

The commander’s metal armor glinted in the sun. About half of his soldiers had the same armor, the others a mix of metal and leather, but all of them had swords, and some of them had long bows. They weren’t Imperial soldiers—those all had metal armor—but they moved like men who’d worked together and knew their strength.

The big one grinned at Jem, licked his lips, and then looked at Garrad. Before he could say anything, a different man rode into Ree’s view. This one wasn’t a soldier. He was dressed like Ree’s idea of a lord, only he didn’t have a sword. Instead, he had a big leather bag, and he held a rolled paper in his hand.

“Is this the farm of Garrad Lenar’s son?” He spoke as if he smelled something bad, all thin and whiny.

Garrad nodded. “It’s my place. And you’d be?”

The man sniffed. “We represent the Grand Duke Parleon, who owns this land.”

“Really?” Garrad leaned forward on his cane. “Last I heard it belonged to the Emperor. Emperor Melles, so I heard.”

A few of the soldiers looked at each other. They must not have expected to hear anything about the Emperor here.

“Times have changed,” said the unarmored man. “My Lord Parleon holds here.” He unrolled his paper and glared at Jem. “According to the records, you have no dependents.”

Garrad shrugged. “That paper of yours is a bit out of date. My boy in the Imperial Army, he sent me his son to look after me.” He nodded to Jem. “He’s a good lad. A bit sickly for soldiering, what with the hacking cough and all, but he helps.”

Jem was skinny enough, but he couldn’t disguise his height. He couldn’t fake a cough, either. Jem was no good at lying.

The next thing the man said was all about taxes and fines and things, but it sounded to Ree more like he was looking to plunder as much as he could and was trying to claim as much wealth as the soldiers could carry off. It made no sense. In Jacona, the merchants and shopkeepers might complain about Imperial taxes, but Ree had never heard of their taking a man’s whole living.

Ree remembered all the people tied up behind the soldiers and wondered if this Grand Duke just wanted to control everyone so he could have his own friends take the land and live off it without working for it, like the bandit lords the traders talked about. He must be dressing it in all this talk of tax.

Garrad didn’t look happy about it. Jem held his head down, so Ree couldn’t see his expression. When the long list finished, the old man grunted. “Go get them snow bear furs out of the barn, lad.”

Jem left Garrad leaning on his stick and rushed into the barn. He didn’t talk, just picked up the three cured furs and carried them off.

“Snow bears?”

“Hobgoblin critters,” the old man said with a shrug. “They look sort of like bears, and they come down off the forests each winter since the magic storms.”

The soldiers and the official looked startled when they saw the sparkling white fur piled high in Jem’s arms.

“Pretty, ain’t they?” Garrad grinned. “Fit for a king, I’d reckon.”

The official ran one hand over the fur. “How . . . how many do you have?”

“We got three over from last winter,” Garrad told him. “You want to go hunting ’em, forest’s right there. We only ever see ’em in winter, and you can’t tell they’re there till they attack. Something magic in the fur, I reckon.”

The official frowned. “And you kill them.”

Garrad snorted. “One of them comes at you, you kill it or it kills you. Ain’t saying it’s easy, now.”

A few of the soldiers chuckled. Ree supposed they understood.

The man must have decided, because he nodded, then said, “That will suffice. Take the furs and secure them. The boy joins us. He’ll be trained and fight in my Lord’s service.”

Garrad’s hands clenched tight, and his breath caught. “He’s weakly. Sick. You’ll be the death of him.”

But the officer ran an eye over Jem and grinned. “Strong enough for what he needs to do.”

Ree felt sick.

Jem caught the old man’s hands in his. “It’s all right, Granddad.”

Garrad’s eyes shut tight. “I lost one boy to the Imperials, son. I ain’t losing you too.”

“You’re not losing me, Granddad.” Jem hugged Garrad and whispered something Ree couldn’t hear. “It’ll be okay.” He turned to face the big bastard. “Can I get changed? And what can I bring with me?” His voice didn’t waver at all.

Ree stayed in the barn, trying to be as brave as Jem, until he heard Garrad say, “They’re gone, son. Ain’t gonna be back in a while, I reckon, not with as much as they’ve got to carry back to their damned Grand Duke fellow.”

He looked worse than Ree felt, all gray and much older than he’d been this morning. Even though Ree didn’t like to touch the old man—it was just wrong, him not being human—he couldn’t help wrapping him in a hug before they went back to the chores. “I’m sorry, Granddad. I wish—” He shook his head. There wasn’t anything they could do. He wished for Jem back. He wished for his humanity back. He wished . . .

They didn’t eat much that night, and Ree didn’t think Garrad slept any better than he did. He kept thinking of Jem and what might be happening to Jem, and his thoughts made him wake with his claws out and dug into the mattress.

Jem had said Garrad wouldn’t be losing him. Were those just pretty words like it will be all right?

Two days later, Ree saw smoke from Three Rivers. Wrong smoke. The smoke of something burning. Once he was through with the milking, he told Garrad, “I’m going down to the village to see if they could use any help.” He managed a crooked kind of a smile. “Don’t worry, Granddad. No one’s going to see me unless I want them to—I’ll go through the forest,” and hurried out before the old man could object.

Ree had to do something. He couldn’t stand just waiting and hoping the soldiers never came back and yet hoping Jem did, somehow.

The forest was so familiar it hurt. Ree had run through here with Jem so many times he knew every tree and every meandering pathway. He noted the deer paths, the signs that there were more this summer than last, which meant they might get more antlers this fall, and maybe carve some needles and other tools from them. There were plenty of burrows, too, foxes and rabbits and other animals. It seemed as though everything was recovering from the horrible year after the change circles and starting to live like normal again.

Everything but the people.

Or maybe it was normal for soldiers to come taking away people’s children and burning down their homes. Ree didn’t know, but he didn’t think it could be right. Who would plow the fields and raise the animals and do all the things the cities needed but didn’t have space to do themselves? This Grand Duke must be very greedy or very stupid. Maybe both.

Three Rivers village wasn’t there anymore. Ree stood at the edge of the forest looking down at what had been a neat little cluster of homes on the tongue of land where two rivers joined to become a third. There was only smoldering ruins. His nose twitched and his eyes stung.

It was far, far too quiet, as though everything else was scared by the smoke. Ree was scared too, but somehow he found himself running toward the ruins, his toe claws digging into soil and hummocky grass and his chest aching.

Not a single house stood. Vegetable gardens wilted from the heat, and all the village animals were gone, either taken by soldiers or run away from the burning. There were bodies in the street, charred things that Ree couldn’t recognize and didn’t want to. He shuddered. He should never have come. Had Jem seen this done? He couldn’t think Jem would have helped. But if Jem stayed with them long enough . . . His heart felt cold and shrunken within him, like a small thing, trying to hide.

Around him cooling timbers creaked and settled. The smoke was now more charred wood than charred meat, and he was glad for that. He shuddered again, and his stomach lurched toward his throat. The hazy air stung his eyes and made them burn and tear.

Someone whimpered.

Ree followed the sound to one of the ruined houses. He edged toward it. It had been a big house. The thatched roof was gone, and the walls had fallen in on themselves in a tangle of wood and sun-dried brick, all of it charred and stark. The cellar doors, heavy wooden things with metal strapping, were still intact although the wood was badly burned.

Someone was crying in the cellar.

Ree hauled the doors open and scurried down into the dark, ashy-smelling air below. He could see the mess of everything that had fallen in from the house, but there was a small clear space, and a girl of about six huddled by the wall. She was trying to cry quietly and not really succeeding.

“They’ve gone,” Ree said softly. “You’re safe now.”

She looked up, staring at him. Soot smeared her face, and her eyes were wide and full of fear. “You . . . you’re old Garrad’s goblin.”

“Yep.” Ree didn’t go into the town, ever, only watched from the cover of the forest when Jem was there, but people had caught glimpses of him, and people always talked. “You think he’d keep something dangerous?”

Just as the kitten had, she watched him with big eyes, trying to decide if he was dangerous. He thought of the burned bundles in the street and of Jem taken away by the people who’d done this, and he wasn’t sure he couldn’t be very dangerous. He had to do something, but what?

“Mama put me here so the soldiers . . . Mama . . .” She cried, big wrenching sobs.

Ree sighed and picked her up. She didn’t weigh much, and he’d carried Jem before, and he was stronger than someone his size should be, but he’d hurt if he had to carry her far. She buried her face in his shirt and kept right on crying.

In the end, Those Damn Kittens calmed the girl down. Three of them had crept into her lap, purring and tumbling, and she’d calmed enough, watching them, to tell Ree and Garrad her story.

She was the youngest child of the village mayor, and named Amelie like her mother. Mama had put her in the cellar because she thought her being so pretty might tempt the soldiers. But the soldiers had taken everyone and burned everything, and Mama . . . She’d eaten some stew, petted Those Damn Kittens, and finally fallen into an exhausted sleep.

Ree and Garrad had gotten her into a makeshift bed under the eaves, then come back to sit by the fire.

“All of ’em?” Garrad asked softly.

Ree nodded. “Jem—” He said. His hands clenched, his claws extending and digging into his palms. “He saw it. He’ll see it. He’ll get used—”

The old man nodded, and sighed. “I don’t know what to do, son.” He closed his eyes. “Seems like no matter which way we turn, there’s damn soldiers in the way.”

“Yeah.” Ree might be able to survive in the forest, but not as a person. Here he belonged. He’d helped make that chair and the matching one where he sat. There was new plaster in the bedroom that he’d put on, and the roof was weathertight because of the many times he’d been up there fitting new shingles and looking for ones too old and dried out to use any more. His humanity was tied to these and to Jem in the kitchen, cooking, and to Garrad making jokes about teaching Jem to shave because he couldn’t call both of them Fur Face.

Why didn’t one of the bad hobgoblins like the snow bears go after the soldiers and kill them all, and let Jem escape back home.

But that wasn’t right. If they were grabbing boys like Jem, that meant a lot of the soldiers were boys like Jem. And besides, if there was one thing Ree knew, all the way from Jacona, before the changes, it was that you didn’t sit around waiting for someone to solve your problems for you.

That reminded him of the way hobgoblins were hunted, how much they scared people in the city, where they had guards and soldiers to protect them. Wouldn’t people out here be even more scared of creatures like him?

“Granddad? You remember when we arrived here?” Garrad looked away from the fire and gave him a sharp look. It had to irk the old man to remember how helpless he’d been.

“You were scared of me, because I’m a hobgoblin, right? And you couldn’t stop me.” He remembered Garrad’s frightened eyes.

A little life crept back into the old man’s face. “I remember all right.”

“How scary do you think a hobgoblin could be? At night?”

Garrad laughed, that short, harsh bark of a laugh that seemed to dare the world to argue with him. “Pretty damn scary, I reckon.”

Ree crept toward the soldiers’ camp, his heart and chest tighter than a miser’s pocket. His fur prickled with every hint of breeze. He moved by animal instinct. Stealthily. He’d never thought there’d be a day when he’d thank the Little Gods for being part cat and part rat.

He’d taken off his clothes and hidden them in the forest not far from where the soldiers camped. This was just himself and his claws. And a lantern, to use later.

One of the soldiers walked past, boots stomping within inches of Ree’s face. He held his breath until the man moved on before he inched forward again. Every sound he made seemed unnaturally loud, every rustle of grass and trickle of dirt like an avalanche. His breath was like thunder to his ears. But the soldiers didn’t hear him and didn’t see him.

He found Jem lying pale faced and exhausted, wrapped in a thin blanket. Ree guessed they worked the boys hard, but there was no excuse for the big bruise darkening one side of his face and the way he lay huddled as if afraid. He wasn’t the only boy like that, and the soldiers must have been scared they’d run away, because they tied all the boys up at night, the same as their prisoners.

Soil and grass slid under Ree’s stomach and tickled his nose. Just as well it was night, because he could see much better than any human. He hoped he could scare them so they ran all the way back to their fancy Grand Duke and never, ever came back.

Ree slid his way to Jem and up alongside him. Carefully, he started to untie Jem’s hands. The way Jem started when he woke, and bit back a scream, made Ree choke on anger.

“Ree?” Jem barely breathed his name. “They’ll kill you!”

“We’re leaving. We all are.” When he’d decided that, Ree didn’t know, but he wasn’t leaving anyone for those bastards. Not even if he had to kill again. He gestured with his head. “Can you get them free?”

Jem nodded. His lips went tight, and his eyes narrowed. He looked so like Garrad that Ree’s eyes burned.

“Good. Warn them about me.”

“What are you going to do?”

Ree grinned. “What do you think? Big, terrifying hobgoblin come to eat them for dinner.”

Ree shielded the lamp before he lit it. It was one of the old ones from when there was magic, with glass behind the metal shutters and a lighter that you pushed to make a spark. There wasn’t any magic in the lamp, but it had taken a mage to make the lighter.

The click of the lighter seemed awfully loud.

None of the soldiers heard it.

Ree wiped his hands on his fur. He was sweating, and his skin prickled. He had to scare the soldiers so much they left their captives where they were.

He cupped his hands to his mouth and let out a hollow roar that could have come from one of the snow bears.

Soldiers stumbled up and moved a bit like bees, only with torches and weapons and looking for something to kill.

Ree caught the handle of the lantern with his claws and raced to the next place he’d chosen: a cluster of boulders not far from the woods. He let loose a second roar before he’d come to a stop, then darted back into the woods to get to his third place.

Another roar sounded, this one from the other side of the soldiers. Ree’s heart jumped in his chest, then he grinned. Jem must have decided to help.

The ruin of an old building was Ree’s stage; all that was left of it was half a wall that he could stand on. He hung the lantern and unshielded the side he needed, then stepped into its light. The effect on the soldiers was better than he’d dared to hope: They cringed from his hugely magnified shadow.

A whole chorus of roars erupted, some of them—to Ree, anyway—sounding like they came from little children.

Ree breathed in deeply and bellowed, making his voice big. “Begone! This is my territory!”

He didn’t expect them to break and run right then, but they did. Maybe the shadows from the rest of the ruins made him look scarier, or maybe it was all the howls and roars coming from everywhere around the camp.

There were a few screams, too, men, not women or boys. Ree dropped back out of the light and shielded the lantern and tried to ignore the way his stomach knotted up. If some of the people who’d been chased out of their homes and . . . hurt wanted to pay back some, well, it wasn’t any business of his.

He leaned against the ruined wall, shuddering. This wasn’t over, not by a long way.

A shape loomed out of the shadows. A meaty hand grabbed for Ree’s throat. He ducked aside, gulping. It was the big one, the commander.

Ree’s lips drew back in a snarl, and he launched himself at the soldier. The man wasn’t in his armor, just a shirt and pants, but he had a sword in his right hand. That wouldn’t matter if Ree was right up close.

He caught the man’s shoulders, digging his claws in while he arched his back so he could get his legs up and use the toe claws where it would hurt most.

The big bastard made a sound that might have been a scream, and Ree heard metal hit stone. His nose wrinkled at the man’s smell of sour beer and worse. His toe claws got a grip, dug in.

The man grabbed at Ree’s chest, trying to pull him away. That let Ree use his right hand to dig his claws into the man’s eyes, his throat.

The big man’s choking scream died to a horrible gurgling noise, and he pitched forward.

Ree scrambled to pull away from him and bit back a yelp when he found the man’s sword the hard way. His feet might be tougher than a human’s, but they weren’t horn.

He stumbled away from the wall and loose stone and collapsed, gasping. His foot stung.

“There he is!”

Ree half-scrambled upright before he realized it was Jem’s voice. A moment later, boys—or maybe young men, Ree wasn’t sure—surrounded him, caring nothing for his fur or for anything but that he was hurt and that he’d freed them. The chatter while they unshielded the lamp and bandaged him made him want to be sick. He hadn’t thought it would be that bad.

“They’ll come back,” he said when the young men quieted down a little. “Maybe not those ones, but others.”

“Those won’t be back.” Jem sounded grimly amused. “They dropped all their weapons.”

People gathered now, women and children and some older men who Ree guessed weren’t fit enough to be put into the army. They weren’t scared of him, and they weren’t treating him like some kind of wild animal.

“What happens when others come, then?” Ree demanded. “More of them, because of the terrible army of hobgoblins that chased those away.” It didn’t matter that the “terrible army” was a handful of youngsters making noises. That wasn’t what the Grand Duke would hear.

Instead of fixing things, he’d made them worse.

Jem frowned, but he looked stubborn and determined, not angry. “We’ve got their stuff. All of it. We can fix things so we can keep them away.” He smiled. “You’ll help, Ree, right? You’ll be the fearsome hobgoblin king for us?”

“I’ll help.” He couldn’t say anything else, really, not when he’d made sure there’d be trouble. “Granddad’s going to complain, but I guess we can feed everyone until stuff can be rebuilt.” Ree bit his lip. “Maybe make walls out of the places they burned, and traps and things.”

“We’ll manage.” Jem said with a nod. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

It wouldn’t be easy, Ree thought. Boys who were just about old enough to be men, frightened women and children who’d lost everything they knew . . . No one was complaining, though. Maybe they were just glad to be alive, as he and Jem had been that first night after escaping Jacona. It hadn’t mattered then that they had nothing except each other.

Now they had something to protect, something to fight for, but they still had each other. Ree caught Jem’s determined look, and Jem smiled. “We’ll look after them, Ree. Like we look after each other.”

Jem looked like a man. Like a young Garrad. Men protected and helped those in need. Men cleaved to their friends and their promises.

“Yeah,” Ree said, his heart suddenly easy despite the danger ahead. “Yeah, we will.”

Matters of the Heart

by Sarah A. Hoyt

Sarah A. Hoyt was born in Portugal, a mishap she hastened to correct as soon as she came of age. She lives in Colorado with her husband, her two sons, and a varying horde of cats. She has published a Shakespearean fantasy trilogy, Three Musketeers mystery novels, as well as any number of short stories in magazines ranging from

Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine

to

Dreams of Decadence

. Forthcoming novels include

Darkship Thieves

and more Three Musketeers mystery novels. She currently lives with her family in Colorado.

“Hello the house!”

Ree jumped when the unfamiliar voice bellowed outside the farm gates. As a hobgoblin, having got himself mixed up with a cat and a rat during Change Circle, he was proscribed in most places. Here, too, though the people who lived near Garrad’s farm had gotten used to him and didn’t fear him. In fact, since he’d helped them escape the soldiers who had come last summer and burned most of the farms around here, Ree had no fear of being seen. Except by strangers.

He dropped the shovel he’d been using to muck out the goat stalls and, pushing aside the goats, walked out of the stall, locked it, then walked out of the barn and across the farmyard, to where he could get a view of the gate.

Last week’s snow coated the ground in a thin, brittle shell that crackled under the new boots that hid Ree’s nonhuman feet. The air had a cold, dry taste tinged with the smell of wood fires; that meant it was going to stay below freezing even if the sun was out. Ree’s breath steamed, and he wrapped his arms close around his body.

The new wall protecting the farm was about seven feet tall, too tall to see past—it was taller than Jem and topped with sharp bits of stone and metal—but the iron gate the village ironmonger had done for them, in gratitude, was big enough to let the donkey and cart through, and they didn’t go outside the farm or the forest without weapons or on their own any more. It was also made of vertical shafts, like spears, and you could see between them. And if you took care to stay kind of to the side of the wall as you looked, no one could see you.

The three men outside the gate were definitely strangers, all of them on horses. Good horses too, which to Ree were horses no one in the region could possibly afford—tall of leg and sturdy. The man at the front wore fancy armor, the kind Ree remembered Imperial officers wearing, and had what looked like a brand new red cloak over his shoulders. He looked about forty, blond and bearded, with that hardened look all soldiers got sooner or later, and he looked angry.

“Who is it, Ree?” Jem whispered. He’d come running from where he’d been, near the chicken coop, and skidded to a stop near Ree. He’d gotten a bit taller since last summer, but mostly he’d put on muscle, filling out to match his height. Sometimes Ree felt like a child beside him, even though Ree was older.

But then, no one knew how Ree was supposed to grow. He was a hobgoblin after all, part cat, part rat and part human, changed by the magic storms. Jem might treat him like a human, and Garrad, the old man whose farm this was and who’d become a kind of grandfather to both of them and who looked enough like Jem to be his real grandfather. Even little Amelie, whom Ree had found after soldiers burned Three Rivers last summer and whose parents had been killed treated Ree like a human, but no one else did.

They accepted him, even were grateful for the way he’d scared off the soldiers, but his fur, and the tail he kept tucked in his pants, and his claws and cat-eyes made him different. Too different to be one of them.

“Three soldiers. They don’t look like the other ones that came last year.” Ree whispered back as Jem leaned into him, partly trying to see around him and partly probably instinctive protection against the bitter cold. He indicated the gate. “But they’re not happy, and blondie out there is getting ready to break things if he doesn’t get an answer soon.”

Jem nodded. He narrowed his eyes at the gate, listened to the way the big man was bellowing and got what Ree thought of as his Garrad look. It was the stubborn, no one makes me do anything look, and it usually meant trouble. Ree had seen it a lot while they helped keep people fed and rebuilt Three Rivers and put a wall around the village so soldiers couldn’t easily burn it out again.

Jem had been a scared little thing when Ree had saved his life on the streets of Jacona, just about three years ago, but he was almost a man now, and while he would help those who needed it, he did it on his own terms and refused to be pushed around no matter how much bigger or older those doing the pushing might be.

“Granddad’s plucking the old rooster,” Jem said his voice slightly louder. “He’ll be out as soon as he’s done. Meanwhile, I’ll deal with them.” He walked up to the gate as calm as if he were going to talk to young men from the village.

The blond fellow didn’t wait for Jem to speak. The moment he could see someone, he demanded, “Where is Garrad? And who are you?”

Jem folded his arms on his chest, tilted his head up, and gave the blond a frosty look. “Until you tell me who you are, it’s none of your damn business who I am or where he is, stranger.”

Ree heard the sharp catch of breath and the creak of leather that meant the man’s massive fists were clenched tight enough to strain his gloves. “Get this thing open now, before I break it down.”

Jem smiled a little. The blacksmith had put special care into the lock and into the forging of that gate and had told them that it would withstand a small group of soldiers. “Go right ahead and try.”

“Jem! Ree!” Garrad’s came from behind them, with the short breath that meant he’d been running.

Ree turned to see the old man hurrying toward them, his walking stick, the one Jem had carved for him two years back, thumping into the ground with every step. He really didn’t need the stick most of the time, but the cold made the ground slippery, and Garrad was all too aware of what falls could do at his age. When they’d met him, he’d been rendered helpless by one such fall. “What’s going on out here?”

Ree had been looking at the blond and thought he noticed a startled jump at their names, but it was nothing to the way Blondie’s face seemed to melt out of its harsh lines and his voice softened at the sight of Garrad. “Father?”

Father? It could be. The old man’s son had been conscripted by the Emperor’s army years ago.

Garrad rocked on his feet, and Ree raced to steady him while Jem kept on giving the blond man his coldest glare.

“Lenar?” Garrad waved Ree off—with the walking stick, so Ree had to jump out of the way—and scurried to the gate. “Gods be praised, it is you!” He fumbled with the lock that held the locking bar down and nodded to Jem. “Get the gate open, and let him in, lad.”

Ree helped Jem with the gate, lifting the heavy bar while Jem hauled it open. The blond man, Lenar, gave them a disdainful look, and the other two men got closer to the blond and started to draw their swords when they saw Ree. But they looked at Lenar before they drew them out all the way.

Lenar didn’t even see them look. He jumped off his horse and hugged Garrad so hard he lifted the old man off his feet. If Garrad’s eyes were a bit too bright, well, Ree didn’t have to say he’d seen it. Not that Garrad would ever admit to it, anyhow.

Jem caught the horse’s reins while Ree closed the gate behind the other two men. Having his back to them made his skin itch and his fur try to rise, but if this was Garrad’s son, then this farm was his. It wasn’t up to Ree to be inhospitable to Lenar or his guards.

“Not so close now, you’ll break something,” Garrad protested, and he disguised his wavering voice with a cough. “Now come on inside and tell me what’s brought you back home and all that happened to you all these years.”

Lenar sounded grim when he said, “Not so fast, Father. What are you doing with a hobgoblin and some other brat here? Who are they?”

Ree got the gate barred and turned in time to see Lenar posed just as Jem had been shortly before, trading glares with Garrad.

Garrad grinned grimly, as though this were a game he was used to. “Boys, you get them horses looked after, you hear? The rest of you come on inside out of the cold, and then we’ll talk.”

Taking all the gear off the horses and stacking it neatly near the barn door took a while, and rubbing the horses down and getting them fed and watered took longer. Jem didn’t say anything, and Ree couldn’t think of anything to say. They’d never talked about it, but Ree had always figured Garrad assumed his son had died. He’d never expected anyone to come back, and Jem made a kind of a replacement.

He wondered where the son’s return left them. Oh, Jem looked enough like Garrad to really be his grandson, but they didn’t know, and Ree wasn’t anything anyone would want. He was useful, maybe, but that was all. A tame pet, Garrad’s goblin.

And little Amelie was just another one of their group of waifs that Garrad looked after and tolerated. She’d lightened up some since Ree had brought her here, but men scared her, and a harsh word from anyone except Garrad got her tearing up and clutching at her skirts as though someone were going to do something horrible to her any time. Ree had only ever seen her smile around the Damn Young Cats—they were too big now to be Damn Kittens, although he suspected next spring there’d be more Damn Kittens to make Garrad grumble. Were all of them surplus now that Garrad’s lost heir was back?

As if thinking about them was a cue, Ree felt a brush of air, then a solid thump on his shoulder. He winced and bit down on a yelp when claws dug in. The Young Damn Cats never could remember that his fur wasn’t as thick as theirs.

The horse he was brushing down didn’t seem to care that it now shared its stall with a hobgoblin and a cat, or that the cat was complaining to Ree in a thoroughly put out tone. “Yes, yes,” Ree said, hurriedly. “Your mama doesn’t catch enough rabbits, and mice are boring. That doesn’t mean you have to complain so much.”

The Damn Young Cat added Ree’s indifference to the list of complaints, and Ree paused long enough to pluck it from his shoulder and set it on the floor of the barn. It was the gray and white one he’d rescued from a tree last summer. Of all the Damn Young Cats, this one was the one that got into the most trouble and had to be rescued most often.

Jem came into the stall, grinning. “Damn cats,” he said. “Anyone would think you enjoyed having them climb all over you.”

Ree finished with the horse and gave the animal a friendly pat before he left the stall. “Yeah, I know. Portable tree for damn cats, that’s me.”

Jem was worried, for all he tried to hide it, and Ree didn’t think he was hiding things any better. “We’d better go protect Amelie.”

Jem caught Ree’s hand for a moment in his now larger, calloused hand. “Don’t worry, Ree. Whatever happens, we’ve always got each other. And when have we ever needed anyone else?”

It seemed to Ree the house was colder inside than it was out in the snow, what with Lenar’s two companions—guards, actually, since he was an officer and he’d been given a title and enough Imperial gold to buy an estate anywhere he liked—watching Ree as if they expected him to try to eat someone, and Lenar glaring at Jem, Ree, and Amelie.

Ree didn’t understand why the Damn Cats made it worse, but they did, and Lenar practically accused Garrad of having gone soft in the head, letting those damn cats have the run of the house. To which Garrad—who complained about the cats all the time—had responded that the cats were homey and friendly and got rid of vermin a treat.

Even the fact that Jem was doing the cooking, quietly getting smoked meat from the cellar to supplement what had been planned as a simple meal of bread and vegetable soup, seemed to set Lenar off. It appeared that cooking was woman’s work, and Garrad should have hired a wench from the village and not have this boy do such things. To which Garrad had boomed that Jem cooked better than any wench he’d ever met. It was true, but hardly a point to argue over. Stubborn and loud sure did run in that family.

“C’mon, Amelie. Let’s get beds made up for our guests,” Ree said. Poor kid had been sitting in the corner clutching a Damn Cat and was white and terrified. She ran to him, putting a sweaty hand in his and sniffling back tears. Might as well get her away from what would be a huge fight.

Garrad’s lips were set and thin, and he had the full stubborn on him. Without the beard, Lenar would have been just like him only younger, and Jem was as bad as both of them together, cutting into the smoked meat and glaring at Lenar as if he wished he were hacking into the soldier.

Amelie clutched Ree’s hand until they were out in the main room, and she needed both hands to climb up the ladder to the loft. Her room was up there, tucked in under the eaves, but Ree figured he’d make up the other bed in the room he shared with Jem anyway. Amelie would feel safer downstairs with Lenar and his guards in the house.

He pulled out quilts and sheets and blankets from the chests in the bedrooms, enough to make up three beds, and tossed them up to Amelie, then climbed up after her. “What do you think, Mama ’Melie? Should we give them straw beds or make them sleep on the floor?”

She brightened a little, showing the prettiness her mother had tried to protect when she’d shoved her in the cellar to escape the raid of the soldiers. At six she should have been too young to be in danger, but they’d learned no one was too young. “They should have proper beds, Ree.” Amelie wagged a finger at him. “It wouldn’t be right to make them sleep cold.”

He grinned and winked. “ ’Sides, if we make them nice, comfy beds, they’ll sleep all night, and they’ll only wake you up when they curse about having to go to the outhouse.”

She covered her mouth with her hands, almost as if she were scared to smile. “Don’t we have a spare pot?”

“For three of them? We don’t have one big enough.”

There was always fresh straw up here; keeping it fresh was one of the jobs that was never finished. The straw in the loft kept winter cold from seeping in through the roof and stuffed the mattresses and cushions. It got used for kindling as well. They kept what they weren’t using at either end of the house, farthest from the chimney in the middle of the loft, and since Amelie’s arrival Ree and Garrad had partitioned off a room for her near the chimney.

Ree saw no reason not to put the men’s beds as far from Amelie’s room as they could, even if Amelie wouldn’t be sleeping there, though it meant bringing a lantern around so they could see to pull the straw together and tuck sheets around it so each man had a more or less comfortable bed. The thick sheets would stop any straw poking through, and with blankets and quilts they should sleep warm. The room was Amelie’s, and he didn’t want them wandering into it by accident. Not that she had much there. Just a couple of cloth dolls and the few shifts they’d found in the ruins of her once prosperous home.

“Good enough, do you think?” he asked when he and Amelie were done. She nodded, but she looked scared, and her hands were plaiting her little pinafore.

“Tell you what,” Ree said. “You sleep in our room tonight, all right? In the other bed. I’ll make it up for you.” With strangers in the house and the way Jem was looking, nothing untoward was going to happen in that room tonight, anyway. Ree saw the relief in her eyes and wondered. She had told him she spied through the cellar lock onto the destruction of her home, but he didn’t know what had happened. Her father and brothers had been killed. Her mother had been killed too . . . but it probably hadn’t been that simple.

Amelie might carry the scars her whole life. He felt toward her as to a little sister or perhaps a daughter, though that was an abomination, of course, as he could never have children and certainly not human children.

Hobgoblins didn’t. They lived wild until someone or something killed them. Most of the ones Ree had seen were alone, the only things like them. Except for the snow bears, of course. Maybe several bears got caught in the same magic circle and then bred, but there seemed to be lots of those.

There was a kind of wolf creature that bred, too and hunted in packs. Ree hoped they’d never see any of those again. They were nastier than the snow bears, and there were more of them. But most of the hobgoblins were the only ones and couldn’t breed with anything even if they wanted to. He didn’t want to. All he wanted was Jem. And they already had Amelie to look after.

After a dinner eaten in silence, while Garrad, Lenar, and Jem traded cold looks, Ree excused himself and left to put Amelie to bed. He made up the spare bed with fresh sheets and obligingly turned his back while she changed out of her day clothes into a nightdress of soft wool that Jem had bought her. Once she was tucked in, he folded her clothes for her and set her boots at the foot of the bed, then blew out the lantern. He and Jem knew the room well enough to come in here without any light at all, and it wasn’t that dark. Ree’s cat-eyes could see everything from the patched plaster to the chests of bedding.

He closed the door softly and padded toward the kitchen. He’d just tell Garrad good night and go to bed.

But halfway through the great room he heard Jem’s voice. “Not going to ‘put it down.’ ‘It’ is Ree, and he’s saved all our lives.”

Ree froze as Lenar growled back—sounding like Garrad when he was angry or hurt. “That thing isn’t safe, damn it! None of them are. They turn on their owners, or you find dead men in alleys with their throats torn out.”

For a moment, Ree couldn’t breathe. Dead men in alleys with their throats torn out. . . . The memory returned to him. Gods above, he’d only been trying to protect himself! And then he’d found Jem and realized what the bastard had been doing. He couldn’t regret killing that man. It had brought Jem into his life, and Jem had called back the human part of him and stopped him from being all animal.

“Some men hurt and kill other men for fun.” Jem said in that cold voice that meant he was so angry he was shaking. “You don’t kill every man because of it. You don’t kill every dog because someone tormented or starved one until he turned.”

“It’s not a man and it’s not an animal,” Lenar said stubbornly. “It’s a magic-made unnatural thing!”

“So’s that lamp up there, son,” Garrad said. “You going to destroy it, too?”

Lenar made a sound of disgust. “Sure. It hoodwinked you too. No wonder they’re talking about hobgoblins ruling here and making the people their slaves.”

Ree didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The trick he’d used to scare the soldiers away, using everyone’s fear of hobgoblins to make them think he was a terrible creature who was ready to eat them right there, had stopped other people trying to bring soldiers in. And it made Garrad’s son think hobgoblins were secret lords here.

“I ain’t hoodwinked, boy. Ree has lived here for two years. He’s as human as you and I, fur face or not.”

Lenar didn’t get a chance to answer, because Jem started, his voice tight with fury. “You think your father’s an idiot? You think he’d let something dangerous stay with him?” He was on a right tear, and he was going to say what he thought, no matter what. “Gods above. I love Ree. Ree and I . . . we’re closer than brothers and always will be. He’s never hurt me, and he’s gotten hurt for me. I’m no idiot, and I don’t think anyone could be that close to someone for more than two years and not know who they really are and if animal or man.”

Ree’s throat tightened, and his chest hurt. His eyes burned so much he had to blink to keep them clear. Jem couldn’t know what he was saying or how a man like Lenar would react. He couldn’t. His pride in their love made his heart want to burst, but he was afraid now they’d both be thrown out into the cold night.

Lenar made a choked sound, then a disgusted one. “What do you know about love, boy? That is not only male, it’s not even human.”

“You’d better believe Ree’s human,” Jem snarled. “He’s better than damn near all men I’ve ever seen.”

Jem stomped from the kitchen in full high and mighty temper, very pointedly not slamming the kitchen door and walked past him, not seeing him in the dark of the great room, after the light of the lantern in the kitchen. Before Ree could speak, Jem opened the door to their bedroom and went inside, closing the door softly behind him.

Ree closed his eyes. He should go to bed too. The chores would still be there tomorrow, and no matter what Garrad’s son thought about him, stalls still needed mucking out and cattle needed milking. Garrad would probably be kept busy with his son, so it would be Ree doing the milking. And he doubted Lenar or his fancy guards would do any of it, so they’d better think twice about throwing him or Jem out. Or Amelie, for that matter.

Garrad’s voice echoed, calmer and full of dry amusement. “You ain’t making a good showing of yourself, son.”

Lenar sounded as though he felt a bit guilty when he said, “I know, Father. I shouldn’t . . .” He cleared his throat. “The thing is . . . I think . . . your Jem might be my son.”

“I thought he might be,” Garrad said. “Your by-blow or my brother’s, only my brother was never that much interested in women, you know.”

Ree raised his eyebrows, wondering how Lenar would respond to that, but Lenar just sounded resigned. “I got married in Jacona, nearly seventeen years ago now. I thought I was going to be posted there until I was old enough to retire. I was already an officer. I was going to bring her to see you as soon as I got leave. Pretty little merchant’s daughter. Myrrine.” He made a sound half sob, half laugh. “She was expecting when my division was sent south to deal with a minor uprising. We were going to call my son Jem, after her late father. We were gone nearly five years, and when I came back I couldn’t find her.” There was real pain in his voice, real anguish. “Nothing I did . . . I thought she must have died, and the baby. It was a miracle for him to get here, somehow . . . And he’s attached himself to that thing. How can he be happy with that? How can he not want a family, children of his own?” He paused. “Do they . . . do they sleep together?”

“There’s two beds in that room,” Garrad said. “And they use one. But it ain’t none of my business, and it’s not yours either, son, leastways unless they tell you.” Garrad just sounded matter-of-fact when he said, “They ain’t said much about it, but I reckon Ree saved Jem from a lot worse than just dying back in that city. There’s a look Jem gets sometimes, and when he’s sick, he talks in his sleep, and some of what he says would curdle your blood.” A short silence, as though Garrad shrugged. “And when Jem talks in his sleep and calls his mama, sometimes he says Myrrine.”

“Then he is mine,” Lenar said. “He’s all I got. He can’t live with that—that—I’ll never have grandchildren.”

“And you’re all I got, and I thought you were dead.” Garrad’s dry amusement came back. “Did you have him because you wanted to have grandchildren?”

“No, I was young, I—”

“You’re still young, son. And even if you weren’t, it don’t justify making Jem into something he ain’t. ’Sides, Ree and Jem . . . Ree brought Jem in, and Jem was dying of consumption. Ree risked getting killed so he could bring Jem in to get help. And then he helped me too. I’d tripped and fallen on that damn rug your mother made, and Ree nursed me and Jem both. Then they both worked hard as any ten men to get the farm back working again. Fact is, if you were to kick them out tonight, I’d have to sell most of my animals and give them the money. They bought those animals with the furs of the creatures they killed in the forest. And they never asked for anything.”

“It’s not right, Father,” Lenar insisted. “It’s just not. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t see enough of it in the army, but . . . with an animal?”

“Ree ain’t an animal.”

Ree couldn’t listen any more. There was too much, and all it made him think was that Lenar was right. Who knew when the animal would take over?

He padded across to the bedroom and slipped inside. Jem sounded like he was asleep, and Amelie too. The old painting on the wall, of Garrad and his brother when they’d been young, made Ree think about families and how he couldn’t have one, not of his body. Nor would Jem as long as they were together. The two young men in the old picture looked happy and relaxed, and so like Jem it hurt.