Steal the Dragon

4

Rialla awoke with a smile. During the short space of time before full awareness descended, she savored the unusually strong sense of well-being like a sliver of ice on a hot day. She opened her eyes with reluctance as her memory returned.

Instead of the gray stone walls she’d grown used to, the room she was in was dominated by wood. The floorboards were varnished and lovingly polished to a high gloss. The walls were flatboard interlocked and darkened with oil. Across the room was a large window, extravagantly made of clear glass that flooded the room with light from outside.

The room was minimally furnished with the bed, a small table in the far corner and a small woven rug. The total effect was spartan and spacious: the warm colors of the woods and the red and yellow bedclothes kept it from feeling unwelcoming. It seemed obvious that she wasn’t in Westhold, but she didn’t have the slightest idea where else she could be.

Rialla sat up and caught her breath at the sharp pain in her left thigh. She remembered being hit by the swamp creature’s tail, but at the time she’d been too caught up in the battle to assess the damage.

She sat up stiffly and tugged the unwieldy quilt off her leg, swinging both of her feet off the bed. A thick bandage of unbleached cotton covered her thigh from hip to knee. Underneath the wrappings, her leg throbbed painfully, though she hadn’t felt it at all when she woke up. Rubbing her head, which was also starting to ache, she tried to reconstruct what had happened in the ballroom, so she could figure out where she was and what she was doing here.

It was difficult to sort out the mixture of other people’s emotions and thoughts, but she could piece together a little of it. She knew that Lord Karsten was dead. She’d felt him die with a brief burning pain as a sharp knife slid between his ribs and into his heart.

Someone saw it happen, saw Laeth slip the knife in —Lord Jarroh, that’s who it had been. His thoughts had a familiar touch; she could remember his rage from her days as a dancer at the club in Kentar.

Rialla shook her head in frustration. She knew that Laeth hadn’t killed his brother; she had felt his grief and rage also when he saw his brother fall. Why had Lord Jarroh seen something that hadn’t happened? Where was Laeth? Why was she here?

Ignoring her wounded leg, Rialla managed to set her feet on the floor, but that was as close to standing up as she was going to get. Frustrated, she reached empathically to touch Laeth and assure herself that he was well. It wasn’t until then that she realized the scars that had limited her ability were gone, as if they had never been. The battle with the monster must have finished what the death of the Eastern empath had begun.

She found the mouse in the wall, and a deer eating grass in the forest nearby. But she couldn’t touch Laeth—or anyone else for that matter. Experimentally, she constructed the shields that would protect her from unwanted contact. Her awareness of the deer and then the mouse faded. She dropped the shields again, to look for anyone she could read.

She touched something else. It felt familiar, as if she’d just been dreaming about it. Without willing it, a smile began to spread across her face. It wasn’t what she was used to feeling when she touched a living creature. She received no emotions, no thoughts; just beauty—as if a sculptor had learned to work in a new medium and created something extraordinary. Something just for her.

Fascinated, she drew closer to it. She was so absorbed in her study that when the door opened and the healer, Tris, walked in, he startled her. She instinctively closed off her gift and assumed the blank face that slaves normally wear.

Now, where had he come from? With her barriers down and her talent free, she should have been able to sense him before he’d gotten that close. Although she couldn’t read Winterseine without touching him, she’d been able to tell where he was. She must have let herself be distracted by the… whatever it was that she’d been sensing.

At least his presence gave her some clue as to where she was. From that and the herbal smells wafting through the room’s open door, she concluded she was at the healer’s cottage in the village of Tallonwood.

“Good morning,” he said with suspicious blandness. “How are you feeling?”

She narrowed her eyes at him, trying to read his face. “I have been better,” she finally allowed neutrally.

He smiled, humor warming his gray-green eyes as it animated his voice. “I bet you have. You’ll feel better if you put your legs back on the bed.” He made no move to help her.

She gave him a wary look, but since it was obvious that she wasn’t going to be going anywhere soon, she painfully maneuvered back under the quilt.

He waited until she was settled comfortably, before sitting on the end of the bed and leaning against the wall.

He was a big man, and the end of the bed sank considerably with his weight.

“I don’t know how much you saw of last night’s events.” He let the end of his sentence rise in a question.

“I was fairly busy,” said Rialla, truthfully enough.

The healer grunted, then said, “Lord Karsten was killed by a knife in the back, while you were slaying the monster. Lord Laeth is locked in the guard tower at Westhold. The evidence against him is quite strong.

“Lord Jarroh himself saw Laeth stab Karsten in the confusion. A guard reported seeing the Lady of the Hold leaving Laeth’s rooms late at night. He also apparently launched quite a verbal attack on his brother the night before Karsten died. The only mystery seems to be what happened to the dagger with which Karsten was murdered.

“Several people, including myself, saw it, but it appears to be missing. It was quite distinctive; the hilt was silver and shaped like a coiled serpent with ruby eyes—the one that Laeth was wearing the night Lord Karsten was poisoned. You have probably seen it.”

“Yawan,” swore Rialla with some heat, forgetting her role altogether. She was left with a real mess to clean up.

“Quite,” replied the healer, Tris, relaxing even more against the wall. “It certainly looks as if someone has planned carefully to insure Lord Laeth is blamed for Karsten’s death; unless Laeth is stupid enough to have actually done it.”

“No,” said Rialla. “It wasn’t Laeth.”

Tris nodded. “Lord Winterseine was anxiously explaining to Lord Jarroh that he had caught his young nephew, Laeth, playing with magic one afternoon when Laeth was a boy. Obviously the adult Laeth took magic up again while he was living in Sianim, and transported the monster from the Great Swamp.

“Indeed, I thought Winterseine knew a great deal about the unusual creature. He told Jarroh that the monster feeds on emotions and that you are an empath—not that anyone in the ballroom last night was in any doubt of that.

“Obviously Laeth intended the thing to act as a diversion while he killed Karsten. He needed you to draw the beast’s attention—so it wouldn’t kill anyone it wasn’t supposed to. Winterseine explained that he had requested that Laeth return you to him and Laeth refused. Winterseine was surprised and hurt until he understood Laeth’s motivation.”

“All that you have is my word that Laeth didn’t kill Karsten. Why doesn’t all this evidence convince you?” asked Rialla finally.

Tris looked at her briefly, sincerity clear in his eyes, and then looked out the window, as if he knew how uncomfortable she was meeting anyone’s gaze.

“Aside from my personal opinion of Winterseine?” he asked. “I was watching Lord Laeth while Karsten was stabbed. I didn’t see who killed Karsten, but it wasn’t Laeth. He was trying to get through the crowd and help you battle the monster.”

Rialla looked out the window too, keeping Tris in her peripheral vision. His cordiality was making her nervous; he wasn’t treating her like a slave. She liked people to be predictable; she couldn’t understand what motivated the healer.

Deliberately, she looked at him until she drew his eye, wanting to watch his face. “Why do you think that I care about what happens to Lord Laeth? I am only his slave.”

The healer smiled, and she could see a hint of a dimple under his close-shaven beard. Humor lit his eyes.

“Ah yes, a slave.” He rubbed his jaw, as if in thought, and then snapped his ringers. “But I didn’t finish telling you the rest of it. Lord Winterseine was here early this morning. It seems that with Karsten dead, he is Laeth’s closest relative: as such he is claiming custody of Laeth’s valuables, including you. I told him that you were currently too ill to move. Are you sure you are merely Laeth’s slave?”

Rialla took an involuntary breath, forgetting momentarily the trepidation she had about the healer. She had been so worried about Laeth that she had forgotten what his imprisonment would mean to his slave. Ren had promised that she wouldn’t remain a slave, no matter how the bones fell, but she’d rather not risk it. She also would rather not see Laeth executed for a crime he didn’t commit.

The problem was that she couldn’t do anything about Laeth or her impending return to slavery. She was effectively immobilized on the wrong side of the Darranian border, with a tattoo that proclaimed her property of Winterseine, who sounded as if he were intent on the death of her closest friend.

She looked at Tris, who had turned back to the window, giving her time to think about his words. She was unsure why Tris sounded so certain that she was not Laeth’s slave, but at this point she didn’t believe it mattered much. With Karsten dead and Laeth imprisoned, somehow keeping their investigations secret hardly seemed imperative—especially since they had failed so spectacularly at foiling Karsten’s murderer. On the other hand, with Tris’s cooperation, she might be able to stall Winterseine long enough to do something about freeing Laeth.

“Why are you so interested?” she asked. “I have spoken to you only once, and the only time you spoke to Laeth was to exchange unpleasantries.”

Tris drew in a breath and spoke slowly. “I have my reasons,” he said. “I don’t think that I will tell them to you yet—but I mean no harm to you or Lord Laeth.”

Rialla eyed him warily, but followed her instinct to trust him. “I used to be a slave, owned by Winterseine. I escaped years ago, and have been training horses in Sianim. When the Spymaster needed someone to play slave and accompany Laeth here, he recruited me.”

When the healer turned to look at her, she lowered her eyes, but continued speaking. “The Spymaster had word that there was a plot against Lord Karsten. It didn’t suit his purpose that Lord Karsten be killed, so he sent Laeth and me here to prevent it. As Lord Karsten’s brother, Laeth was a perfect choice. As his slave, I was supposed to gather information on who was trying to kill Karsten and why.” She shot Tris a quick, wry look. “Unfortunately, it seems that we only made the murder easier by giving the killer the perfect suspect. Laeth has always had a questionable reputation.”

Lowering her gaze, she continued slowly, “I believe that the man who killed Karsten was his uncle, Lord Winterseine. He came here with an empathic slave, who died by her own hand the night she arrived. I can’t be certain he intended to use her as a distraction for the creature in the ballroom, as he claimed that Laeth used me—I would have thought that she was too valuable for such use. Still, he certainly knew that she could be used that way.”

She pulled the fabric of the bedcover tight and released it. “As for magic, I know that Winterseine is a mage. He makes his living as a slave trainer and trader—he was the man who enslaved me. If slavery were outlawed, as Lord Karsten proposed, it would reduce Winterseine’s income enormously. With Karsten dead and Laeth blamed for it, Winterseine inherits all of Karsten’s wealth and protects his current income as well.”

Tris said, “I thought he was not at the hold when Lord Karsten was poisoned.”

Rialla shrugged. “He wasn’t there, but his servant Tamas was. It wouldn’t have been much of a feat for him to slip poison into the food or drink. A trusted servant, even someone else’s, is close to being invisible.”

She rubbed her temples to alleviate her headache and continued, “There is also the matter of the missing dagger. Any decent mage can tell who wielded a weapon used for murder.”

He had started to say something when she heard a knock from somewhere else in the cottage. He pushed her flat on the bed and put a finger to his lips, then shut the door quietly behind him as he left the room.

She couldn’t hear what was said, but she recognized the voice. When Tris, carrying what appeared to be a pile of bandages and a cloth bag, ushered Lord Winterseine into the room, she was lying down with her eyes closed. Winterseine touched her, and she moaned, channeling the pain from her leg to him through his touch, magnified enough that he didn’t leave his hand on her for very long.

“He’s right. Father,” said a voice that she recognized as Terran’s. “She still seems to be in much pain. The spikes on the tail of the swamp creature are poisonous. We should leave her here until she’s healed or she’ll be of little use to us. What good is a crippled dancer? From what I’ve been told, the healer is the finest in Darran. If she is recoverable, he is the one to do it.”

Poisonous, thought Rialla. The healer must be pretty impressive when he can make a tainted wound feel this well in less than a night.

“Very well, Healer,” said Winterseine’s hated voice, and she felt him pull back the quilt so he could see the tight bandages on her leg. Though she was wearing the gray slave tunic, she still felt exposed without the covering to hide beneath.

“I will be back to see her tomorrow,” he continued. “Don’t worry about payment. If my nephew is not freed, I will cover the expense. She is a very valuable dancer and well worth the investment—especially if you are able to keep her leg from scarring.”

“I will do my best, but not for the sake of your investment.” Tris’s voice was cold with dislike, and Rialla remembered that Laeth had said that the healer was not overly fond of aristocrats.

“Of course not, my dear man. A healer doesn’t think of such things as money when he is curing the sick.” Lord Winterseine’s tone was amicable, disguising the dig in his words. Everyone knew that this healer was infamous for charging exorbitant rates.

Apparently the dig bothered Tris not at all. He said coolly, “My rates increase with the irritation that the case gives me. Yours have just doubled. You have seen her. The door is in the same place it was when you entered.”

Winterseine laughed, but he left all the same.

Rialla and the healer waited until they heard the outside door open and shut. Tris stuck his head into the other room to make sure that they had left, then resumed his position on the foot of the bed.

“So,” he said warmly, as if the frost in his manner had never been, “what do you plan to do now?”

“First,” she said, “I need to get Laeth out of the guard tower. I suspect that unless Lord Winterseine makes a personal confession, Laeth will hang for the death of his brother.”

“I can help with that,” said Tris. He closed his hand and then opened it to show her the yellow rose that he held. Bringing the flower to his nose, he smelled it once; then he handed it to Rialla and continued to speak. “I have talents that might prove useful.”

She looked at the rose, wondering if he used magic or sleight of hand. Deciding it didn’t matter, she granted him a tentative smile. “Thank you.”

“And after you free Laeth?” asked Tris thoughtfully.

“Gods,” she said, “don’t ask me. I’m a horse trainer, not a spy. I suppose I’ll go back to Sianim with Laeth.” Something about retreating to Sianim left a bad taste in her mouth, but she didn’t know what else to do.

Tris got to his feet. “You’re not going to be capable of anything unless your leg is ready to hold you, so let me take a look under the bandage.”

He drew a knife from a boot sheath, and pushed the blankets to one side. With a brisk efficiency that said much for the sharpness of his knife, Tris cut away the bandage on her leg.

From the looks of the wound, a spike had hit just above her knee and ripped through muscle almost to her hip. The flesh around the wound was mottled with bruises. There was a poultice over the torn area, a green mass that made the slice look even nastier than it felt, but what caught Rialla’s attention was the smell.

She grabbed her nose quickly. “What is that stuff?”

Tris looked up momentarily from his perusal of the injury, unperturbed by the foul odor. “I’m not sure exactly what kind of poison the spirit-eater uses. This dressing should have drawn out most of it. Most of the odor is the poison, though the leaves have a strong scent of their own. I’m going to put the same dressing back on until it quits smelling, then I can start your healing.”

He separated an oil-treated cloth from the rest of his pile and lay it out on the bed, then taking a small pair of pincers from the bag on the floor, he began pulling the large green leaves off her leg. Once he had most of the big pieces off, he carefully picked out the bits and pieces of greenery that remained. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and Rialla bit her lip as the gentle probing induced the pain she had expected earlier.

Tris gathered up the mess and left the room, returning shortly with two pans of steaming water which he set on the floor. He dipped a clean cloth in the water, then wrung it out and set it on her leg; he repeated his action several times as the cloth cooled down. When he was finished, the wound was clean and Rialla was trembling.

He took a carefully wrapped bundle out of the bag and unwrapped it, revealing dried leaves as long as Rialla’s forearm and twice as broad. He took five or six and lay them in the clean pan of water to soak.

“Here now,” he said, and his normally slight accent was thicker with sympathy. “I’m going to put a bit of this powder on the cut. It should help the pain in a bit.” As he spoke, he sprinkled a yellow powder lightly on the wound, holding the torn skin open with one hand. “It’s an anesthetic made from a plant I caught some local youngsters chewing on.”

He started to put the softened leaves on her leg and chose to distract her with his story. “One of them had a bit too much, and I had a time keeping him from cutting off his hand. He thought that a maggot had gotten into it and was eating its way to his heart.

“I gave the whole village a lecture on the weed. In case that doesn’t work, whenever I run into a patch of the stuff I make sure that the taste keeps anything with a tongue in its mouth from eating it. I’ve found and treated enough of the plants that most of the village young ones steer clear of it; but as a topical anesthetic it has few equals.”

“You’re a magician?” Rialla questioned, hesitantly. Darran was not a place where anyone admitted to being a wizard, but Tris’s words had invited the question.

“Magic-user,” he said as if he were correcting her, but as far as Rialla knew the two were the same thing. “Does that bother you? You are not Darranian.”

She shook her head. “No.”

He pulled the remnants of the old bandages out from under her leg, where they were keeping the sheets clean, and began strapping her leg with new wraps. “There, almost finished.”

A bell rang stridently in the other room, and he called out, “Coming. No need to ruin my ears.” He finished what he was doing, gathered up the mess and headed toward the other room. “You might try to rest up. I’ll be back in to check on you when I am through.”

Rialla shut her eyes and endured the throbbing of her leg for a few minutes before the pain started to lessen. As soon as the powder numbed the wound, she fell asleep again.

When she woke up, the small table had been pulled up beside her bed. The surface of the table was inlaid with light and dark wooden squares, forming a game board. The squares were occupied by small wooden game pieces carved in the shapes of animals, real and imaginary.

The pieces lined up on her side of the board had been darkened by oil until they were nearly black. On the other side of the table, seated on a stool he must have pulled from another room, Tris was carefully lining up similar game pieces that were fashioned from a blond wood.

Without looking at her, Tris said, “This is a game that my father taught me, and now I am going to teach you. You would call it ‘Steal the Dragon,’ and,” he held up a winged lizard carved with loving detail, “the object of the game is to steal the other person’s dragon.”

He explained to her in careful detail how to develop strategies, and the importance of stealth and deceit, following his lecture by saying, “Of course, you realize all I have just imparted to you won’t help you at all. The only way to learn to play is by playing.”

Rialla had noticed earlier that she was unable to stay wary around the healer; he simply wouldn’t allow it. He ignored her silences and treated her as if they’d known each other for years.

After the first twenty moves of the game, Tris gave her bland face a piercing look under his heavy eyebrows and said in a menacing rumble,“ Woman, who taught you how to play?”

In stunned disbelief, Rialla heard herself giggle. She had never heard such a ridiculous sound come out of her mouth, and she pulled the quilt up to her face to keep the silly sound from coming out again.

When she was sure that she had it under control, though laughter still pulled at the corners of her mouth, she said, “There is a woman in Sianim who has taught that game to everyone she can con into it. She hosts a tournament at least once a week. She says that it keeps the rabble off the streets and trains them to be devious, an important skill for a mercenary.”

Tris growled at her and made his move. As the play progressed, the healer’s face grew darker, and it took him longer to move his pieces. Rialla decided that he was playacting more than anything else, because his shoulders were loose and his movements easy.

She took one of his pieces. He glowered at her beneath his heavy brows, leaving her fighting the urge to laugh.

Darkness fell, and with an impatient wave of his hand the oil lamps on the walls lit themselves, and Tris returned his attention to the game, ignoring Rialla’s start at the casual way he used magic. All the magicians she’d ever seen tended to use it sparingly.

Watching the healer, Rialla wondered why the thought of his anger didn’t make her afraid the way other men did. If any other man, even Laeth, had growled at her the way Tris had, she would have been bristling with defensiveness, despite knowing he was only teasing. Why was it that when this total stranger glared at her, she laughed?

Experimentally she lifted her shields and stretched out the fingers of her talent. She’d already discovered she couldn’t read him outright, but maybe she could learn something if she were focused on him. She reached out and touched—then drew back startled.

She had felt him before. He was the fascinating presence that she’d sensed when she woke up in the healer’s cottage. The being so different that she hadn’t even realized he was human.

“Your move,” he said.

She closed her talent off again, reluctantly. Almost absently she moved a piece and went back to her thoughts. With Winterseine and the few other magicians that she’d tried to read, she’d been able to discern no more than their presence unless she was touching them. She’d concluded that the discipline required to control magic gave magicians involuntary shields against her talent. She wondered why Tris was different.

“Your move.” There was a hint of satisfaction in his tone that caused her to turn her attention back to the game.

The last move she’d made had undone the strategy she had been working on for the past several hours. Any move that she made would leave her dragon for Tris to steal, and if she didn’t move (also an option), he could steal her dragon anyway.

“Give up?” he asked, a little more eagerly than he should have, and she closed her mouth and returned her attention to the board.

“Not yet,” she answered. There was something that she was missing; she stared intently at the board. There was nothing she could do to protect her dragon, but maybe there was something that she could do to get his. With a triumphant smile she took her rat and moved it to the same space that was occupied by his dragon. “Theft!” she claimed triumphantly.

“Thief,” he acknowledged with a betrayed look at the board. He gathered the pieces and put them in the drawer of the little table with the same manner that a mother would use to put her children to bed. By the time he was finished, he had a broad smile on his face. “That’s the first good game I’ve had since I came here. Rematch tomorrow. Now, you get some sleep.”

She slid down the bed and pulled up the covers, and Tris waved at the lamps. Compliantly, the small flames extinguished themselves.

“If you need anything, just ask,” said the healer. “I’ll be on the other side of the door. Good dreams.”

“And to you,” Rialla replied with a yawn.

The next morning the dressing on Rialla’s leg still smelled like rotten onions, so Tris replaced the old leaves with fresh ones and covered her thigh with a new bandage. When he was finished, he brought in two bowls of thick porridge and chatted lightly while they ate breakfast; then he left to go collect some herbs he needed.

Rialla waited until he was gone before experimenting with her newly recovered empathy. If she were going to use it to rescue Laeth, she needed to know how well it was working.

Releasing her shielding made her feel exposed. She shifted uncomfortably and pulled the bedcovers up under her chin, as if physical covering would make up for her lack of mental protection; but she didn’t reestablish her barriers.

By the time she felt the healer near the cottage, she was sweating and exhausted—but she knew that she was almost as strong as she had been before Winterseine captured her. If she couldn’t work as effortlessly, at least her shields were stronger.

When Tris came into the room to check on her, he frowned and felt her forehead. “How do you feel?”

Rialla shrugged carefully; the work that she’d been doing gave her a nasty headache. “Not too rough.”

Tris grunted in acknowledgment and then said, “Lunch first, then a nap.”

Rialla fell asleep before he got back with lunch.

Rialla opened her eyes sometime later to find the oil lamps on and Tris muttering at the game board, apparently playing a game of Dragon against himself.

She watched for a while and then said, “Black wins. If you move the black sparrow to the left three spaces, then the black stag can take the white dragon in two moves.”

Tris tilted his head at the board, then got up from his stool. He moved around the table to stand by the bed and look from Rialla’s point of view. He rubbed his beard and slanted an assessing glance at Rialla over his shoulder.

He began to reorganize the board for a fresh game. “Are you ready for a rematch?” he asked.

Rialla gifted him with a lazy smile and sat up. “Ready to lose again?”

He raised an eyebrow, and with laughing eyes he bared his teeth at her and made his first move. “Enjoy yourself now, sweetheart. You won’t feel like it later.”

The room was silent and all but humming with intensity—Tris was as competitive as Rialla. After twelve moves Tris had it won. He sat back and relaxed while Rialla stared furiously at the board, looking for a way out.

“Tell me about Laeth,” asked Tris while he waited for Rialla to move.

Rialla looked at him warily. But after another glance at the board, she decided that he wasn’t trying to distract her. With a shrug, she moved one of her mushrooms and killed his rat, knocking the piece lightly off the board as she set the mushroom in its place. “What do you want to know?”

Tris moved a frog and said, “It takes an unusual Darranian to make a successful mercenary.”

Rialla frowned at the game, still unwilling to concede. She poisoned his frog with her other mushroom before she spoke. “Laeth is… I suppose ‘unusual’ works as well as anything else. He’s a genuinely nice person who takes great pleasure in shocking people, especially people he doesn’t like.

“He’s a decent fighter in practice, and I understand that he’s better when the fighting is real—I stay out of the real battles. I’m a horse trainer, not a soldier… or a spy either, for that matter.” Rialla paused to think, and then smiled. “He’s also a diabolically clever practical joker.” She shrugged, uncertain how to proceed.

Tris had waited for her to finish talking before he moved an owl to eat the mushroom that had killed his frog. Without looking up as he took her piece off the board, he said, “I take it that you are friends as well as associates.”

Rialla gave him a keen glance and asked, “Why are you so interested in Laeth?”

Again a heavy, mobile eyebrow crept up toward Tris’s hairline. “I only met him twice. Both times were under less than ideal circumstances. If I’m going to help you get him out of Westhold, as it looks like we’ll have to, I’d like to make sure that I’m risking my skin for someone other than the arrogant aristocrat that I met when Karsten was poisoned. So, how well do you know him? Is he a lover, a friend, an acquaintance…”

“He’s a friend, a good one,” Rialla answered. She looked back at the board, and missed the subtle relaxation of the healer’s shoulders that would have told her that her answer was far more important to him than he’d indicated. “He wouldn’t make a good lover—he’s too much in love with Marri.”

“Karsten’s wife?”

Rialla shifted her wolf an extra square since Tris wasn’t paying attention to what she was doing. She nodded her head in response to his question and then explained, “Not that he’d do anything about it. He was in love with her before she was betrothed to Karsten. When he found out that she was to marry his brother, Laeth left Darran and turned up in Sianim. Marri came to Laeth’s room to warn him that someone was trying to blame him for the attempted poisoning.”

Tris nodded, took Rialla’s wolf off the board and replaced it with his fox. Rialla objected hotly to the implicit accusation that she would try and take advantage of his inattention and move extra spaces, a practice that was legal only if your opponent didn’t notice what you’d done.

Tris crossed his arms and held his position. Pouting, Rialla killed his fox with her remaining mushroom. The rest of the game was mercifully short; Rialla didn’t enjoy losing.

Rialla awoke sometime in the middle of the night to the sound of violent pounding on the cottage door. She sat up and waited, unable to leave the bed.

She heard a woman’s voice. The words didn’t penetrate the door, but the tone was frantic. It was answered by a lower rumble that she assumed was Tris’s. A moment later the healer entered the room, followed closely by the small, cloaked figure of the Lady of the Hold.

This time Tris lit the room more conventionally, by lighting a candle with flint and steel and using it to kindle the lamps.

Marri took off her cloak and looked around for somewhere to set it. Finally she simply dropped it to the floor. She looked as though she hadn’t slept for several days. Her complexion was gray, and dark circles surrounded her eyes.

“Rialla,” Marri said, her voice hoarsely urgent. “Laeth told me that I should come to you if I needed assistance. I don’t know who you really are, or what you are doing with Laeth, but I need…” She stammered a little.“ He needs help, and I don’t have anyone else to go to. Lord Jarroh wants revenge, and he’s convinced that Laeth killed my husband.”

Rialla nodded and patted the side of her bed. “Sit down,” she said briskly. Marri perched on the edge, as far from Rialla as she could.

Tris pulled up his stool and tried to appear innocuous.

“It doesn’t sound like Laeth had much of a chance to tell you anything.” commented Rialla. “Laeth is a good friend of mine”—she looked pointedly at the distance that Marri had left between them—“nothing more. We were sent from Sianim to prevent the murder of his brother. You can judge our success for yourself.” Rialla shrugged and ran a weary hand through her hair. “I hope I’m more successful at preventing Laeth’s hanging.”

“They’re not going to hang him; they’re going to draw and quarter him,” said Marri in a small, shaky voice, “tomorrow morning.”

“What?” exclaimed Rialla, throwing her blankets back and jumping to her feet. Tris’s hand was there to catch her when her leg failed. “Whatever happened to a ‘fair and deliberate trial’?”

“Lord Jarroh has declared that there isn’t any doubt of his guilt. Lord Winterseine will swear he saw Laeth stab my husband,” she replied, shrugging hopelessly. “So I came to you.”

“Scorch it,” said Rialla in frustration, “how in the name of Temris am I going to be able to help him with this plaguing leg?”

Tris abandoned his mild demeanor and pushed Rialla back down on the bed, saying, “Stay there. Now, miss.” he turned to look at Marri, “can I trust you to keep your tongue to yourself?”

Marri nodded mutely.

“Well enough, I suppose,” Tris said, turning to Rialla.

He reached down, pulled his knife and sliced the fresh bandage off her leg. The leaves smelled as bad as the last set he’d removed. The healer’s face was grim as he peeled the dressing away.

“I can heal your leg enough that you can walk on it, but you’re chancing your life. If that poison isn’t out of your system, it could still kill you,” he said.

“If it’s my time to die, this is a good night for it. Better that than sit idle while Laeth is killed,” replied Rialla briskly.

“Your choice, lady,” acknowledged the healer in formal tones, as if this were a ritual of some kind.

He placed his hands over her leg and closed his eyes. Rialla’s leg tingled and went numb, so she could no longer feel the touch of his skin against hers. Her heart rate picked up until her pulse raced as if she were running in terror and she gasped for breath.

His hands glowed orange in the shadows of the night, as if lit by some inner fire. She could hear Marri’s gasp but was too distracted to take notice. If he could heal her like this, Tris was definitely not a common magician; everyone knew healing was difficult for wizards.

Tris pulled his hands away, leaving only a half-healed scar on Rialla’s leg, saying, “That’s the best I can do and still leave you enough energy to get out of bed.”

Experimentally, Rialla got up and flexed her knees to put some strain on her thigh muscles. The leg hurt, but it held under her weight. She flashed a quick smile at Tris and turned to Marri. “What do you know about the tower? How is it set up? How many guards are there, and where are they?”

Marri looked for a minute at Rialla’s leg; the angry red scar was invisible behind the tunic that hung to her calves. “Laeth is being held in the top of the tower.” She closed her eyes, as if it would help her envision the tower more clearly. “There are four floors on the tower. The lowest level is underground and contains only weapons and supplies that are not being used. There is usually a guard at the stairs that lead down to the weapons room. Besides him on the main floor there are two or three others. The next floor up is where they question the prisoners. They don’t always station a guard there, but with a prisoner in the tower there are sure to be several.”

Tris grunted and turned to Rialla. “If I get Laeth out of the tower and back here, can you get your horses? You’ll need them to get away.”

“What do you mean, ‘If I get Laeth out’? You aren’t planning to do this all yourself, I hope. Laeth and I can buy horses here, or at the next village. I’ll come with you,” stated Rialla.

The healer shook his head. “It will be easier for me to get Laeth out by myself. That healing has tired you more than you apparently yet realize. If Laeth and I have to run ahead of the chase, you won’t have the stamina to make it.

“The horses are necessary,” he continued. “There are none to spare in the village. Even if there were, Lord Jarroh is not the most reasonable of men and likely would hold the owners responsible even if you steal the beasts. If you try to make it on foot to Riverfall, which is the closest village, the guards will overtake you before you have traveled half a league. The horses are probably going to be more difficult to get out than Laeth is—at least he can climb over the wall.”

Rialla frowned at him. “Why are you doing this?”

The healer gave her an enigmatic smile and replied, “If you wish to, you can ascribe it to a hearty dislike of both Lord Jarroh and Lord Winterseine. Given a chance to annoy either or both, I’ll take a little danger in exchange.”

Rialla had the feeling that it was the best answer she was going to get.

“What can I do?” Marri asked.

“Just what you have done,” replied Tris. “If someone sees you out and about tonight, you’ll be held responsible for Laeth’s escape. That is a crime that holds the death penalty as well, even for nobility. If you would like, you can wait here and see him off, then I’ll get you back in with no one the wiser.”

She looked mutinous but finally nodded her head. Rialla suspected that it was the knowledge that she would be more of a liability than an asset and not any ideas of self-preservation that made Marri agree.

“Do you have any weapons here?” Rialla asked. “The only thing that I brought with me from Sianim was a knife, and that is in Laeth’s rooms in the hold.”

“Anything my lady desires,” he answered grandly as he walked to the flatboard wall.

He touched it gently, and a section moved in just far enough that he could slide it on hidden tracks behind the rest of the wall, revealing a small closet. A packing trunk occupied most of the floor, but the rest of the closet was dedicated to weaponry, most of it projectile weapons.

Rialla shot Tris a look under her eyebrows. “It looks like a poacher’s dream come true. I always thought healers were law-abiding citizens.”

He shrugged. “I haven’t always been a healer. Poaching has become a favored hobby of late. Most of this is useless for combat, but there should be a knife or two and I think that there might even be a sword.”

There was a sword, heavier than Rialla was used to wielding, but it would work. She had to borrow one of Tris’s belts so she could wear the sword sheathed. She struggled with the braided leather before finally wrapping it twice around her waist. The sheath was too high for an easy draw, but she couldn’t afford to be too particular.

She also borrowed a dark-colored tunic and trousers since her slave’s garb was too light-colored to skulk around in effectively. Although everything was too big, a few lengths of rope tied here and there, as well as Tris’s belt, made the outfit workable.

Tris took a wicked-looking staff, as tall as he and studded at both ends with metal points, and pulled the door back into place. Even knowing that it was there, Rialla couldn’t detect any sign of the door once it was closed.

Rialla followed Tris out the door, leaving Marri alone in the bedroom.

The workshop was as busy as the bedroom was spartan. Large windows were cut into the three outer walls, letting in the dim light of the waning moon. All of the wall space not devoted to windows was covered with shelves of various sizes, which were in turn stacked with neatly labeled clay and wooden containers. So many bundles of plants hung from the ceiling that it looked like a jungle, and Tris had to bend his head to avoid the flora.

Once out the door, Tris motioned her behind the cottage where the woods began.

“There’s a path to the hold through here,” he explained shortly.

Rialla concentrated on her footing until they reached the better surface of the path. “How are you going to get Laeth out?”

“Subtlety and a bit of magic,” he replied. “Have you thought about the horses?”

Rialla nodded. “I’ll get them out through the herald’s gate.”

“Without alerting the guards?” he asked.

She smiled at him. “You do your part, let me worry about mine.”

They quit speaking then. Rialla wished she had taken the time to find where their horses were in the stables, but she’d been too intent on maintaining the appearance of a slave.

They reached the wall of the hold before she was ready. It loomed high over their heads, more of Karsten’s improvements. Rialla ran her hands over the freshly cut pale blocks of stone, fingering the edges. The wall was meant to keep back armies, but it was unfinished. Small gaps between the stones made the wall as easy to climb as a ladder. Rialla raised her hands and got a firm grip in preparation to climb.

“Wait,” said Tris in a soft voice that wouldn’t carry to anyone who happened to be on the other side of the wall. “Your red hair makes you too identifiable. Stay a moment, and I’ll take care of it.”

She released her hold on the wall and took a step nearer to the healer. He touched her hair lightly and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he looked closely at her and then nodded. Rialla pulled a strand of her hair to where she could see it, then let the dark-colored mane fall back to her shoulder.

“Illusion,” he said. “Simple, but it will hold for the night.”

Rialla nodded, and began again to climb; Tris chose another section of wall and did the same. On top Rialla noted that the catwalks that were meant to run the entire length of the wall hadn’t yet been built here—making the descent a simple climb down the inner side of the wall.

Once on the ground they were much safer. Although it was still too early in the morning for much activity, it would be easy enough to come up with a reason for legitimate occupants of the castle to be wandering around in the darkness.

“I’ll get the horses and meet you at your home,” suggested Rialla softly.

Tris nodded, and replied in a voice as quiet as hers, “That is as good a place as any. If I’m not back before dawn, take the woman and go to Sianim. Luck be with you, dancer.” He turned toward the tower.

“And with you”—she wasn’t sure why she added the next word—“shapechanger.”

He stopped in his tracks, spinning to look at her. For an instant she saw a glimpse of something… wilder in his face. But it was only for an instant, and then he was scowling at her with laughing eyes. “You know so much of shapechangers you can name me so on such short acquaintance?”

Rialla shrugged and said easily, “The woman who taught me how to play Steal the Dragon is rumored to be a shapechanger. She calls it Taefil Ma Deogh.” Rialla knew that she couldn’t twist her tongue around the syllables so that they sounded correctly, but she thought that Tris would get the point. “She’s never said that she was a shapeshifter, but she’s never denied it either. I’ve also been around human mages long enough to know that healing is not something that human magic works well on.”

“I am not a human wizard,” he acknowledged. “Nor am I a shapechanger, though my people are distant kin. Taefil Ma Deogh is a very old game, and well known amongst us.”

“What are you then?” she asked.

Again he shook his head. “Nothing that you would know. We have been too few for too long. If we live through this night, perhaps I’ll tell you about my people.”

Rialla turned on her heel and began stalking in the general direction of the stables, murmuring to herself, “If that man makes one more cryptic remark, he may not live through this night.”

She decided she would look more suspicious if she tried to sneak around, so she strode boldly past the makeshift pens that had been erected to house the animals of the lesser nobles. There was a pair of guards making their rounds, but they paid her little heed.

By the time she reached the main stable, she was perspiring from fear and vowing never to do anything other than train horses again. Before she entered, she drew a deep breath.

Horses were empathic themselves. If she walked in feeling fear, it was bound to cause an uproar in a stable full of warhorses. Rialla closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath of horse- and hay-scented air, trying to pretend she was in one of the barns at Sianim.

Rialla knew the general layout of the stables from her earlier visit. There were stalls along both outer walls and small loose pens in the center. The tack was set in the middle of the aisle between the stalls and the pens, far enough away from either that the horses couldn’t nibble at the sweat-salted leather. Rialla suspected the pens were where she’d find their horses, since generally the stalls would be assigned to the hold animals.

The stable was dark inside, and Rialla waited just inside the door, hoping her eyes would adjust to the darkness. A few of the horses nearest to her began shifting as they noticed her unfamiliar presence. Carefully she extended her empathic touch to them, reassuring them that she meant them no harm.

When her vision had gotten as adjusted as it was going to, Rialla stepped forward cautiously until she rested her hand on the top bar of the inner pen. The horses were only darker shadows in the night. Rialla counted on her empathy to help her find the right animals. Rialla had herself trained Laeth’s gelding, Stoutheart, though not the mare she’d ridden here. She could have taken the first horses she came to, but both of the Sianim animals were conditioned and of high quality.

Most of the horses ignored her, resting comfortably in the clean straw bed. An aged gray mare walked with Rialla the length of her pen, hoping for an apple. Rialla rubbed the mare’s cheekbone where it itched and silently apologized for coming without a treat.

Her horses were in a pen near the end of the barn. The mare stood in a three-footed doze, but Stoutheart whickered softly in greeting. By touch Rialla located saddles and bridles, then readied the horses while they were still in their pen.

Leading the horses out quietly required Rialla to send out a constant reassuring babble to all of the horses they passed, and she released a sigh of relief when she finally made it out of the building.

There was only one way to get horses out of the hold. The main entrance was kept shut and barred at night, but on the other side of the gatehouse was the herald’s gate. The gate was actually a narrow tunnel through the base of the wall, designed to allow the passage of messengers when the main gates were closed. Heavy metal doors, locked and barred, were set into the wall at either end of the tunnel.

Rialla was able to lead the horses unseen along the wall, due more to luck than any skill on her part. When they neared the gatehouse, Rialla extended her senses and found each of the guards on duty there and on the nearby wall. If they had been alert and ready for trouble, she would have had to find another way; but they were bored and drowsy. It only took a nudge to send them over into a sound sleep.

She yawned herself before leaving the horses waiting while she searched the guards until she found a large ring of keys.

Rialla opened the first door and continued through the tunnel to open the outside door as well; it would be easier to convince the horses to enter the tunnel if they could see the light on the other side. As she stepped into the tunnel, she noticed that the floor was covered with a metal grating suspended over the ground by a pair of heavy wooden beams. Getting the horses across it was going to be quite a feat of persuasion—and loud in the bargain.

The mare put her front feet into the opening, but backed up quickly at the strange sound of her metal-shod hooves on the grating. The whites of her eyes gleamed in the darkness and her ears were flattened with displeasure. Even with Rialla’s gift, the mare wouldn’t budge.

Sending soothing thoughts, Rialla backed the mare away and tied her reins high on her neck so that she wouldn’t trip on them. Though the mare wasn’t trained for a verbal command to stay, as the gelding was, her instincts would keep her near the other horse.

Rialla had tried the mare first because she was smaller. Even throwing the stirrups across the back of the saddle to reduce the gelding’s width, she was afraid that the bigger horse’s barrel was going to rub the sides of the tunnel all of the way through.

When Rialla led Stoutheart to the mouth of the tunnel, he dropped his nose and blew a puff of air at the strange floor. Using her empathy and soft coaxing sounds to encourage him, she took a step back, tugging once on the rein and then relaxing the pressure.

The gelding put a foot tentatively on the metal floor, flattening his ears at the odd sound as well as the slight flexing of the grate. But Rialla had trained him, and he trusted her to know what would hurt him and what was safe. Deciding that the floor was going to hold his weight, he followed her almost placidly. When he reached the far side, he found a small patch of grass and began to eat.

She commanded him to stay, and started back to the tunnel. Before she reached the opening, the mare bolted through, clanking and snorting, anxious to rejoin her companion.

The open door was sure to send searchers out as soon as the guards woke up enough to notice it. If she closed it and got out over the wall, it could be dawn before anyone realized that Laeth was gone. There was work currently being done on the wall here as well, and the scaffolding on the outside would offer an easy enough method for exiting the hold.

Rialla slipped back through the tunnel, locking the doors behind her. She tucked the key ring back into the guard’s pocket and started over the wall.

Unlike the part of the wall that she’d crossed to get into the hold, here there was a newly built, though obviously temporary, catwalk. The guard who slept on the newly constructed stone stairway shifted uneasily as Rialla started up the stairs. He was a veteran, and not one to sleep on duty no matter how tedious. She turned back to the base of the stairs and reinforced her suggestion to give her time to get over the wall before he woke up.

Just as she lowered her protective barriers to project sleep onto the guards again, someone nearby died in an unpleasant, terrifying manner. Rialla tried to shut it out, but was unable to stop before she’d projected what she’d felt. She heard the guards cry out with their comrade’s death throes. So much for escaping unnoticed.

She would have sworn if there had been time for it.

The first guard who saw her and attacked was inexperienced, and slowed her only minimally as she staggered for the stairway, and left him to wake up with a headache in the morning.

Before she could gain the stairway, where the veteran soldier waited patiently, two more guards came out of the gatehouse. They moved apart to flank her, one quickly climbing the first few stairs to gain the advantage of height. She ran directly at the one on the stairs, then quickly changed direction, ducking under the stroke the other guard had intended for her back.

Failing to find the anticipated target for his sword, he lurched forward, trying desperately to regain his balance. Using a neat backhand, Rialla hit him on the head with the pommel of her sword and flashed a bright smile as she turned to face the second guard, still standing on the third stair.

He had obviously expected an easy victory and stood peering at the still, silent shadow of his associate. He quickly shifted his attention to Rialla and began to descend. Before he could close with her, she set him on his backside by sweeping his feet out from under him with the flat of her blade. She didn’t have to knock him out—he did it himself. Breathing harshly, Rialla ran up several steps to face the warrior who waited for her there.

The first three men had been inexperienced, and unaware of what they were facing. This man had watched her take out his comrades and knew that she was Sianim-trained—it didn’t take Rialla long to discover that he was too.

He was good, but she was better, just not enough better that she could get behind him and knock him unconscious. Several times she could have wounded him fatally, but she couldn’t force herself to take the opening and end it. Not because she was overly squeamish, but because she remembered what it felt like to kill a man when her empathy was barely functional. She had no intention of killing when her gift was working well.

If she killed this one, there was a fair probability that the act would kill her too. She already had a thundering headache thanks to the three prone forms strewn behind her.

The guard knew as well as she did that she was the better swordsman, and she could feel him thinking of the fate that would fall to his family if he died. His young wife had just given birth to their first child. The widow of a guardsman would have no one to care for her, and he worried.

She might be the better swordsman, but he was stronger than she was and she was beginning to feel a deep weariness—perhaps the effect of Tris’s healing, as he had warned. If she did not finish this fight soon, she might not win it.

Her face grim with concentration, she began to force the guard backward up the stairs. While she fought, she reached out lightly and touched the presence that she knew to be Tris—later she would wonder why she found him easier than Laeth.

Sweat trickled down her neck, and she worried that she wouldn’t have the stamina to do what she was going to try. The guard reached the top step, and stumbled when he reached for a higher step that wasn’t there.

He caught himself quickly, but his stumbling gave Rialla a chance to press home her advantage, until both of them were on the battlement. The wooden boards of the walk creaked underfoot. If they fought too long, someone would look over and see them.

She waited anxiously for Tris to leave the hold, aware that her thigh was beginning to show definite signs of weakening. Her sword arm ached with the force of the guard’s blows. He was starting to believe that he might face another day, though he was puzzled that she hadn’t finished him when he stumbled over the nonexistent step.

The wall was crenelated to allow archers to fire through the low sections and dodge back behind the higher merlon. Though the top of the wall was well over Rialla’s head, the crenels were only hip high. When she knew that Tris, hopefully towing Laeth behind him, was safely out of the castle, she feinted. The guard drew back, giving her the room she needed to jump onto the crenel wall and, in a step, over the other side, landing some distance below, on the slanted platform of the scaffolding.

She slid and stumbled to the ground and called Stoutheart to her by focusing her gift. Only when she was mounted and heading for the cover of the woods did she look to see if the guardsman had followed her leap. Seeing no one, she assumed that he had realized that his heavy mail shirt would hamper his leap, and had retreated to sound a warning.

The clear tones of the alarm bells followed her into the woods.