Jaime wasted no time after Chandrai left. With the day turned into evening, she knew she didn't have much time to waste . . . not if the evening ague came on her—and it hadn't missed a day yet.
She all but bolted from the office, calling back over her shoulder, "I've got to check Arlen's workroom . . . see if Natt and Cesna can tell if anything's missing—"
She didn't expect Linton to come with her; his concerns centered around the stable, and he'd only just come in from a long day of riding. But he did, and right on her heels as she headed away from the stables and into the hold proper, aiming for the stairs. "I can't believe you spoke to her like that," he said, and she couldn't decide if he was admiring or appalled. "Do you know how miserable she can make your life?"
"Other than kicking me out of the hold?" Jaime said, somewhat grimly. "I suppose she can probably blacklist me, but only unofficially. Just because she's a Council wizard doesn't mean she gets to do as she pleases."
"Guides, aren't you the calm one." He shook his head, took her arm, stopping them both at the base of the dark stairs. "If she convinces the others that you're involved in the use of a forbidden spell, you'll spend time in confinement." Jaime looked pointedly at his arm, but he didn't release her. If anything, his grip tightened slightly, even as his eyes narrowed. "Just exactly where did Carey go?"
Jaime hesitated, wondering about the laws here, and how much Linton could know before he, too, took on risk. "He's looking for answers."
After a moment, he released her, his otherwise benign features taking on a cast of distrust that the darkened stairwell only accentuated. "Answers," he repeated, and the suspicion was in his voice, too.
"Linton," Jaime said, "have you ever known Carey to back away from something that needed to be done? Even when everyone else says he's wrong?"
"I haven't known him as long as you," Linton said, but it was an admission of sorts.
"And you barely know me at all. But I've learned something about myself in these past few years . . . I'm not so different from him. We have different priorities, but somehow . . ." She thought about his comment that she could be confined for involvement with a forbidden spell. Deep down she'd known it; after her involvement in Calandre and Willand's hearings, she couldn't help but know it, even if she weren't familiar with the exact laws. She'd just avoided thinking about it so she wouldn't feel the fear she felt now. Confined. No horses, no chance to throw herself into the kind of riding that made her soul sing. Or possibly banished from this world. No Jess, no Dayna . . .
She already had no Arlen.
That was the thing to focus on. Doing something about that, even if it only meant finding out what had happened so she could dig her way out of the wondering. Find some sort of closure. And, if Dayna was as right as Jaime thought she was, keep it from happening to someone else.
She looked straight at Linton and said, "If I could tell Chandrai anything about that second spell, I would. Because I think someone needs to figure it out, and damn fast."
"You had no right," he said. "Either of you. You had no right to get me involved in something that could come crashing down on me. I've got a family here in the hold, a little girl—"
"Don't you get it?" Jaime said, cutting him off, her voice raised nearly to a shout. "You're not involved. And if you want to stay that way, you'll stop questioning me right now."
Linton stopped short, mouth still open, startled as he thought her words through.
She said, "Your best bet is to trust us. Trust Carey, because you know him. Trust me . . . because Arlen did, and Carey does."
She watched him think about it, going through hesitation, lingering at the impulse to dive in and be a part of it all—this time by choice. And then he gave the faintest of nods.
Jaime sighed with relief . . . and moved right on to other matters, figuratively sweeping the previous conversation under the rug. It never happened. How Mission Impossible could she get? "What I need is for you to talk to all the other couriers. Let them know what you saw, and if anyone else has seen anything like it, I want to know. All of us are on alert for it from now on. I want any sightings mapped and watched. If we have to, we cut our message load and spend more time scouting."
He winced. "No one'll like that." Not the landers, or the separated families, and especially not the peacekeepers and precinct guard.
"We'll play it by ear," she said, and at his puzzled expression, added, "Take it as we go. Make decisions as we get more information."
"Map it as we walk it," he said, understanding clearing his features.
"That's it." Jaime triggered the permalight in the lower stairwell and gave it a grateful glance. These days, she barely had enough concentration to maintain a glowspell the size of a firefly, not that she'd ever been any good at it.
"I'll post a meeting for tomorrow morning before the riders go out," he said. "I guess . . . it would be best if I just went back to the job room and made sure we've got all of tomorrow's outgoing accounted for."
"Everything but whatever you brought in with you." Jaime rubbed her forehead, suddenly aware that she'd had a distinct tingle of warning there for some moments, buried beneath the intensity of their conversation and the ramifications of Chandrai's visits. She fumbled for the flask by her side, barely hearing Linton's questioning comment, gulping it down just in time—
The evening ague rolled over her like a storm, crashing headlong into the magically enhanced dosage. She knew Linton caught her as she fell; she heard his bellow for Gertli.
And then she was gone until morning.
"Big bootin' whee," Suliya said, staring critically at Mark's computer monitor, her hand on the back of the chair Dayna occupied, scooted up just beside Mark's own desk chair. "Just the same as the dispatch, really."
Mark, heretofore congenial and hard to jostle from his good mood, actually looked hurt. Dayna glanced over her shoulder with the kind of disapproval Suliya had learned to ignore a long time ago, and said, "Computers do a lot more than give people access to the Internet." She turned back to the big monitor with an interest that surprised Suliya. "I hadn't yet gotten one of these when I left. It almost seems like magic, now . . ."
"From what you've said," Mark told her, apparently willing to pretend Suliya hadn't snorted at his toy, "it's a lot like magic. The way a programmer builds a program doesn't sound all that different from the way a wizard builds a spell."
"Huh," Dayna said, looking entirely too thoughtful. If she got lost in playing with the computer, Suliya was going to get bored, fast . . . maybe she'd wander out and see what was on the entertainment device Mark called a TV. At first she'd thought she could learn a lot about this new world by watching it, but both Mark and Dayna had laughed when they found her at it. Game shows and soap operas, they'd said, had nothing to do with the real world. That's why people watched them in the first place.
Suliya said, "I think I'll go see how Jess is doing with Ramble."
In perfect unison—and without looking at her—Mark and Dayna said, "No!"
"Poot," Suliya said, sliding into a sulk. "You two sound like you have the same brain."
She wasn't sure why they both burst out laughing. As far as she was concerned, it only proved her point.
"Jess is having enough trouble with Ramble," Mark said, so reasonably. "Not to mention that he keeps taking off his clothes."
"You can't keep blankets on some horses," Suliya told him. "Bet he's one of them."
Dayna gave her a calculating look that put Suliya right on edge. "You want something to do?" Dayna asked. "Fine. Let's see about straightening your hair."
"What?" Aghast, Suliya clapped her hands to her head. "Not my hair!"
Mark grinned, and Dayna gave her a wicked smile. Teasing her, even as they meant it. "For as long as we're here, yes. You stand out far too much with that mop—can't afford anyone to take notice. Or we could cut it . . ."
Suliya gave a shriek of dismay. A small shriek, considering the circumstances, but Mark winced anyway. "Keep it down," he said. "I don't think Carey's feeling well."
"Not since we got here," Dayna said. "I don't think he knew how much help he was getting from the healers. The world travel messed him up, and there's no one here who can help. I sure can't pull off that kind of advanced healing magic."
"I gave him some ibuprofen." Mark gave an idle click of the mouse, and after a moment his machine muttered you've got mail! in a voice too cheery to be true.
Suliya didn't care about his mail. She glared at Dayna. "No one said anything about my hair when you talked to me about coming here, and no one's touching it now."
"No one knew we'd be here as long as it looks like we're going to be here," Dayna said. "And I was thinking you might like to get out and look around. Shop, maybe. You seem like you might enjoy shopping. Southland Mall isn't much, but it's more than you've seen so far. But you, in rural Ohio? You'll attract attention, all right."
Mark paged through several screens of text, faster than Suliya could follow; he made a snort of dismissal, got rid of the email somehow, and started the process to shut down the computer, all as he nodded agreement with Dayna. "Gotta agree, you seem like a shopping kind of gal," he said. "And Dayna's right. We don't want you looking memorable right now—and trust me, even with straight hair, you'll be plenty memorable." He glanced over his shoulder, tossing her a grin. "That's a good thing, Suliya."
She eyed him warily. A compliment, then. But still—!
"Besides," he added, "I thought you girls liked to play beauty salon."
Dayna looked like she wanted to hit him, but didn't. In a disgruntled way she said, "That's not very PC, you jerk."
"Ha," he said, and grinned at her, leaning back in his swivelling chair as the computer monitor went dark. "I'm right, or you would have nailed me."
"It just so happens it's an easy spell to learn."
Suliya gave her a suspicious look. "And just how easy is it to un-spell?"
"Easy enough, or I wouldn't have mentioned it," Dayna said, pushing back her own sandy, boringly straight hair, cut in the currently popular multilayered Camolen style at which those in Suliya's family would have sneered. "Look, I'll just do a small little section, okay? And I'll put it back, and you can see for yourself."
Still wary, Suliya agreed to that much . . .
Except Dayna couldn't. Her casual concentration turned to quick consternation, and then to a flabbergasted string of curses. Suliya tried to hide her relief.
"A little spell like this should be a snap—we know the spellstones work!" Dayna said, and tried a quick series of additional spells, none of which had any effect whatsoever. She went into an angry, scowling thoughtfulness, and Suliya sneaked away to the bathroom to check her hair from all angles, making sure it was just as it had been.
She'd thought this would be an opportunity to prove herself invaluable to Carey . . . but Carey barely noticed her, and her only contribution—boring, boring, boring, for days now—was to take watch outside Ramble's stall when Jess needed a nap or a meal. She'd thought she'd have been right in there with Jess, teaching the newly made man what he needed to know in order to tell Carey and Dayna what they needed to know.
Patting her hair back into place behind a headband borrowed from Jaime's bathroom drawer, she considered that given the expression on Ramble's face when he looked at her—when he looked at any of them, other than Jess—she might be better off outside the stall.
He didn't like being human. And he certainly understood who had made him that way—the other humans. That Suliya had been dragged along to Ohio just as much as he made no difference to him at all, if anyone had even mentioned it to him.
She peeked back into the office, a cramped little room with what could only be a man's touch—Mark, probably—in the browns and tans of the straightforward decor. The computer overwhelmed a desk that reminded her of the one in Carey's job room office, and the desk crowded up against unadorned bookshelves of some material that looked like wood but wasn't, chock full of books with the overflow shoved in every which way. The most remarkable object in the room was a strange little frame with five perfect silver balls hanging on clear string.
Which was to say, there was very little to remark upon in the room at all, and to Suliya's mind—considering she had crossed the barrier to another world—that made the room somewhat of a cheat. The kitchen was fun, and the house boasted any number of small oddities, but she'd seen nothing to—
Well, to take the curl out of her hair.
No one noticed her reappearance, or seemed to. Mark leaned back in his chair, nodded to something Dayna had said.
Dayna made a face, then seemed to find resolve. "That's that, then—I've got to hit the stores. If I can get the right kind of crystal, maybe I can invoke a spellstone, pause it, and suck up power through it to store in another stone."
"What's wrong with just using the spellstones you have?" Suliya said. "You brought plenty for all of us."
Dayna raised an eyebrow. "That's what you get for walking out of the conversation," she said, but almost immediately relented. "I'm a little concerned about how the trip over went. I think . . . Jess may be right; there's a problem with the magic. I'd like to have some extra power to feed into the stones for the way back."
Mark shook his head. "Sounds damned risky if you ask me. Pausing an invoked spellstone. Sheesh." But when Dayna turned on him, he held up placating hands. "Yeah, yeah, I'm not the wizard around here. Anyway, I know just the place. Kinda new, stuck off the end of Hocking Street. I'll take you."
"Me too," Suliya said quickly, and when they both looked at her skeptically—in a way her father's employees never would have dared to display even when she was a child—she added firmly, "I'm coming."
Dayna groaned. "I hate the fact that the phrase burnin' poot comes to mind," she said, and sighed. "At least braid the hair, will you?"
"We won't all fit in the truck if she doesn't," Mark said, and grinned, pleased with himself.
Suliya pretended he was a servant, tilted her chin in the air, and turned on her heel to return to the bathroom and such hair management tools as she'd been allowed to bring. But inside, she didn't truly mind. Inside, she had a little girl grin. Time to explore.
Arlen's travel slowed to an unbearable rate. Too slow. He took to packing supplies on the horse and buying them whenever he could get his hands on them. He was lucky to have found new foot gear, thoroughly waterproofed, and—tucked away in the back of a second-hand store—a ripped and crudely mended set of packs to sling over his saddle in lieu of himself.
On foot, his progress slowed considerably. Slowed further by the need to settle for a day now and then—getting the horse's hooves seen to, gathering what news he could. Nothing remarkable, past that first public revelation of the Council death.
If he wanted to, he could reach out and find the travel anchor in Anfeald, the one in his personal rooms. The rooms where he hoped Jaime still waited. If only she'd been able to hear—
But she hadn't; his nightly attempts to reach her had had no effect whatsoever, making him wonder if she were indeed gone. It didn't matter. He'd go after her if she'd left. It might well make him an outcast, but he knew how to kill the checkspell long enough to do it, sanctioned or not.
But he didn't hunt for the Anfeald anchor, and he didn't try mage travel. He didn't use any magic at all—aside from a few boughten spellstones to keep his feet warm as he trudged through the slowly diminishing snowpack and those undetectable, private attempts to reach Jaime. Between his gradual movement south and the rapidly changing season, he should find his feet on solid ground soon.
Or, he thought, clambering over a downed tree limb just emerging from the snow with its dark smooth trunk shining slickly in the melt-off, he'd find his feet in mud.
He tugged the reins and the reluctant and rough-gaited horse made a big deal of stepping over the tree limb. "Grunt," Arlen said, more in encouragement than imprecation . . . for Grunt was what he'd finally named the creature.
He had no idea how many days—weeks—it would take him to reach Anfeald. He only knew he was determined to do it, and determined to stay out of trouble while he was at it—even if, as the only remaining member of an ambushed Council, he had a target of intent tattooed on his skin so deeply that he could all but feel the itch of it between his shoulder blades.
Even if despite the clues he'd gathered at the distorted, dangerous area his coach had nearly blundered through, he didn't yet know any more about the situation than the average man on the street.
Well. Perhaps not quite that little. And before he reached Anfeald, he intended to know more. "Come on, Grunt," he muttered in exasperation, reminded once more why he'd never taken to traveling on horseback when Grunt's wandering mind and random decision to stop in the middle of the road nearly yanked Arlen's shoulder out of place. "Quit fooling around and pretend to be heroic. Things will go a lot easier for both of us, I assure you."
Mostly, he thought, easier for me.
Then again, there wasn't going to be anything easy about this journey, about what waited for him at the end of it . . . about Camolen's recovery.
No matter what.
Jess leaned her forehead against the bars of Ramble's stall—his closed, locked stall—and breathed a sigh of relief.
She hadn't wanted the others here for this.
She hadn't told them she intended to ask him today. When they visited, hovering, trying to discern if he were ready for some real communication, she slid back into the easy work, the beginning work. The things Ramble understood but was bored with, so never did very eagerly no matter what.
And they trusted her. They expected her to let them know when he was ready to talk to them. Jess had moved through the morning in a strange haze of duplicity, knowing her own intent, knowing they expected to be told . . . and not telling. Not even Carey.
Never had she deliberately hidden anything from them before. From anyone. She was by nature the most honest of horses, in her evasions and refusals as much as her willingness to try. She knew it had been one of Carey's favorite things about her as his top courier mount.
But he no longer rode Lady—not for courier jobs, not for pleasure. Some hidden piece of him had never accepted the horse part of her once he'd taken to the woman part of her.
It was that hidden piece of him that she no longer trusted. Certainly not to do right by Ramble, a horse already done immeasurable wrong. Carey knew it was wrong, he knew it—and he let it happen because Ramble was a horse. A tool. A member of a species to which Carey had devoted his life's work, becoming one of the best . . . but still an animal to be used, when all was said and done.
So she protected Ramble from him—from them all—and from the intensity of their questions. They'd push him. They'd upset him. They'd confuse him.
She wouldn't.
But somehow in the process she felt forced to betray her own honest nature.
She gave her forehead an unthinking scratch against the bars, horselike even in that, leaving her bangs in disarray. The rest of her thick, mane-textured hair felt tight against her head; Suliya, bored that morning, had sat Jess down for what she called girl-talk, weaving a complex braid while she was at it. "You hair's perfect for braiding," she said. "It'll hold anything!" She'd gone on to chatter endlessly about some of her early riding experiences, so that Jess decided the whole session was better described as girl-listen; she had the feeling Suliya was trying to communicate in some complex subtext, but that habit was one of the human things at which Jess had never become good.
So she went back to dealing with that at which she excelled. Ramble. Betraying him, betraying herself, betraying her friends and Carey, all in subtle little ways that distressed her even when she couldn't quite define them. She reached down to the second latch they'd installed at the base of the door—out of Ramble's reach, though he'd never tried to undo the upper latch, quite content to stay in surroundings that felt familiar and comfortable. He'd been waiting, interested, in the back of the stall as she'd taught him, eager for her arrival.
If he ever regained his horse form, he'd have much better manners than he'd started with.
Jess pulled a huge apple from the pocket of Mark's light jacket, buffed it against her stomach, and took a big bite before offering it to him; he accepted it, took a bite and, hesitating, offered it back to her.
He'd done the same thing the day before. It had been the moment she'd decided it was time to talk to him.
They ate the apple together, and she used the edge of the jacket sleeve to wipe the glint from his lip and chin. Some horses were like that with apples . . . more spit than there was apple. He let her tend him, nudging her only slightly with his shoulder. She'd been the same, once . . . expecting the humans to handle her. Expecting they had the right, no matter what form she was in.
"Ramble," she said, sitting cross-legged in the clean shavings of the stall, "I need to ask you some questions."
He sat beside her, reaching for the end of her braid and twisting it between his fingers. He'd been an exceptionally mouthy horse, and had turned into an exceptionally fidgety man—always touching something, feeling the textures . . . she'd taught him how to tie knots purely for the pleasure he got from it. "Ask," he said agreeably.
"You can ask, too, if you want," she said.
He fingered her hair, his mobile face twisting somewhat in conflict. He had the questions, she well knew . . . he just wasn't sure how to ask them. Like her, he understood speech much sooner than he was able to generate it.
"If you want," she repeated. "You don't have to."
He nodded, satisfied with that.
"Not long before we came here, when you were still horse," she said, watching to see that he understood, that he gave the tiny jerk of a nod he'd already acquired the habit of making as he took in information and processed it in his new human way, "you were out on a ride with Sherra."
"Sherra," he said. "Too . . ." and he made a serious face, a strict face. Trent, Jess was certain, had only laughed at half the things Ramble pulled . . . and Ramble had pulled half of them just to play the game.
"Yes, Sherra. She rode you, not far, and tied you while she talked to other people who came without horses. Do you remember?"
"No." He said it flatly; he didn't look at her. Lying.
Jess sighed and shifted slightly away from him, pretending to go off in her own thoughts. Pretending he wasn't there.
"Jess," he said, and started to nudge her; she turned a fast and furious look on him and he backed off, dropping her hair to thump against her back. "Jess . . ."
She didn't look. After a moment he gave a snort of pure exasperation, jerking his chin in a motion that would have been a curse of neck-wringing in his horse form.
If he'd said he was frightened, if he'd trembled, if he'd been honest in his reluctance . . .
But he wasn't. So she let him work through the dilemma of being ignored until he came around with honesty, as certain as anyone could be that he would . . . and that in itself spoke more of his recent journey than any of the others would ever understand.
Finally, he said in a low, half-sullen voice, "I don't want to remember."
She turned back to him, all her attention given up to him. He tossed his head, this time a precursor to showing off . . . except he knew better than to push it that far. "I'm sorry," she said. "I know it is a hard thing. But . . . an important thing. We need to know so we can try to make that place safe again."
He frowned; it turned his features harsh. "You . . . no." He looked away from her again, then back; it all but broke her heart to see how he struggled. For her. For her, when she was manipulating him as much as any of them.
"Tell me," she said softly. "All the things that happened in that place, before you broke away."
"Don't remember," he said, his chin hard and disapproving, his lower lip tight.
"You do." She pushed him this time. "You do remember. We always remember." We, as in horses. And we, as in the only two horses ever to discuss their situation in human form.
He still didn't look at her. He didn't fidget or reach out to her. But after a long moment, he said, "They screamed. The trail ate them . . . they screamed. It came to eat me. I ran."
A long speech. A hard one. "Attaboy," she murmured, remembering Trent's use of the words as he'd come to say good-bye to the horse when she, Dayna, and Suliya left Second Siccawei. He flushed with pleasure and then startled, felt the warmth of his own face, prodding the flesh. But she wasn't done; she had to ask those things Dayna and Carey would ask, or they would only be out here to do it themselves. And while she might be manipulating Ramble . . . she did it to make things easier for him. They wouldn't know how much easier. Or Carey would, if he stopped to think . . . but she didn't consider him in a thinking mood of late.
They wouldn't be here in Ohio if he was.
"Did you see anyone else?" she asked Ramble. "Besides the wizards. Anyone hidden?"
He shook his head; she didn't believe it.
"No one in the woods? Watching? Causing what happened?"
"Magic happened," he said, a quick burst of matter-of-fact words.
Dayna had said so, too.
"You felt the magic?" When he looked up, his surprise matching hers, she said, "Do you always feel magic when it happens?"
"Always," he agreed. "Not . . . you?"
She hitched her shoulder up in a shrug. "Usually, yes. Not everyone does, though." She eyed him. "Someone made the magic happen. You did see a person in the woods."
He sighed hugely, letting it vibrate his lips a little. Giving up. "Yes," he said. "A person, a horse." Cautiously, watching her for permission, he touched her shoulder, her back. "This much. Stallion. With black mare. Pretty."
"Good," she said, and this time she thought she had it all. He wouldn't hold back much after that sigh. She had it all . . . and it was nothing. Someone had been in the woods; he or she had made magic happen, and the wizards had died screaming in a woods come alive with distorted reality.
Dayna had felt the magic. Everyone who had seen the spot knew how horribly the wizards had died. All they'd truly gained from their journey here, from Ramble's transformation, was the knowledge that a man had been there, bringing that unfocused magic into play . . . and presumably knowing the results. They now knew it hadn't been an accident.
But no one had ever truly thought it was.
Jess forgot where she was. She put her hands over her face and felt like crying, then felt Ramble's tentative touch on her arm. Trying to reach out; trying to follow the rules she'd set for him. It made her laugh, but the sound came out more like a sob. "Stupid," she said. "All for nothing. I told them . . ."
He made a sharp interrogative noise, as abruptly close to demand as he'd ever been with her. And for the first time responding as though he were a friend instead of a project, even a project she was training for his own protection, she looked at him, at his strong features and bright, beautiful hair, said simply, "They needed to know what you knew. That's why we're here."
"All for nothing," he repeated—another question.
She shrugged. "Mostly they already knew it."
"All for nothing!" His face darkened; this time the words were accusation, and Jess suddenly realized her error. He was a big man, stronger than Jess, stronger than any of them, and just as with a horse, their ability to control him depended on keeping him happy . . . and disillusioned about just which of them was stronger. Angered, endowed with enough intellect and spirit to direct that anger, and they could lose him . . .
"You can go back," she said. "We can go back." And they could, now that they knew what he knew.
"All for nothing!" He thumped his chest with his open hand. "This! Not horse!" And he gave a snort of utter disgust that left nothing of his feelings to her imagination. "They did this!"
"Yes," she said. "They did. What happened . . . many people need to be protected from what happened. They—we—needed to know. And now you can go back."
"Now."
It took her a moment to realize he wasn't just repeating her words, but was making a demand. Now.
"Soon," she whispered . . . both a correction and a plea for understanding.
This time, Ramble was the one to turn his back on her.