Suliya sat cross-legged on the bed she'd come to call hers but in truth was borrowed space in a borrowed room that quite clearly belonged to someone else. Jaime's simple taste and style were nothing like her own; pleasant enough to the eye, it nonetheless lacked the expensive class to which Suliya had long been accustomed.
She stroked one of the shirts she'd brought. One of her favorites, cut perfectly to her measurements and well spelled against wear and tear; she could have worn it to clean the barn if she'd wanted.
She hadn't worn it at all. She'd brought it more for the comfort of having it than for the intent of wearing it. In truth, she couldn't wear it here, not without drawing attention—not with its Camolen cut, a very feminine version of Wheeler's professional attire, and the magical sheen of it. Smooth, slick material slid past her fingertips, and then the texture of color-on-color, satin-stitch embroidery. Gorgeous. Sensuous. A deep teal that was stunning against her dark skin, and usually reminded her of the sister who had given it to her.
Now it just reminded her of the family wealth and influence . . . and her sudden new insights into how those advantages had been acquired.
Out in the kitchen, Mark gave a low laugh at something Dayna said; those two pretended to quarrel more often than not, but beneath their words lay the easy byplay of long acquaintance . . . and a trust Suliya had never felt anyone offer to her.
Too much of her father, showing through? Or some other flaw?
She abruptly realized she had no idea of how the others viewed her. She knew only how she'd viewed herself, and suddenly that didn't seem like a reliable measure.
Mark laughed again; dishes clattered. They must be cleaning up after the evening meal. Normally Mark would be gone off to his night shift—at a small road inn, Suliya was given to understand—but he'd called in sick after the events of the day.
Suliya didn't blame him. She'd felt too sick to eat herself.
The pantry door squeaked open, and Dayna reported, "Nothing!" loud enough to be heard throughout the house—for Jess and Carey had retreated to their room immediately after the meal, but were no less anxious to hear a response from Jaime than anyone else.
Unfamiliar tones followed Dayna's announcement—Wheeler, asking a question Suliya couldn't make out. She'd be burnt if he hadn't passed Dayna's friend-or-foe test with bootin' ease—meaning his aura blazed just about the same mix of blue and orange light as his words would indicate, and that therefore he'd represented himself accurately enough that while they might not trust him, they could trust what he told them.
They'd just better ask all the right questions at the right time, Suliya thought darkly, still angered that while the man had said enough to cast doubt on everything she'd thought she'd known about her father, Wheeler then sealed his mouth against the questions he'd raised in her.
Well, maybe they'd go home soon. Maybe Suliya could just ask those questions herself. She'd already been shoved out to take the world on her own to prove herself . . . what more could he do?
With that intention determined, she quite abruptly snatched the shirt up and shoved it into her carrysack, not heeding the careless crumple of the material and pretending not to realize that the gesture was an empty one—this particular shirt could never wrinkle. For good measure, she kicked the carryall under the bed and headed for the hall and then the kitchen. If she couldn't pry any more information from Wheeler, maybe she could flirt with Mark. She liked the grin he gave her when she did, as if the two of them were sharing a secret joke of some sort . . . a joke on Dayna or just on the world in general, she wasn't sure, but right now it would be a rife distraction.
She didn't get that far. Jess's voice from behind the closed bedroom door distracted her, firm and yet carrying that sad note she'd had lately. Sad or frustrated . . . and as little as Suliya had known her before they'd come on this trip, she knew neither sad nor frustrated were words she'd have used to describe Jess with Carey.
"I trust Dayna," Jess said. "She won't send us unless it's safe."
"Dayna makes her trails as she goes along," Carey said. Also sad . . . working an argument he knew he was going to lose, but not willing to give it up. "She goes more on gut than experience."
"Inner feelings of what she believes is right, you mean," Jess said, the slightest hesitation there. Suliya drifted toward the door, all but putting her ear to the crack between door and wall. Even so, she couldn't hear Carey's response clearly, though he obviously confirmed the intent of his comment for Jess. She said, "She proves over and over that her inner feelings are to be trusted."
"She almost killed us with raw magic backlash," Carey said, more loudly this time. Frustrated, like Jess.
"Before she even knew what it was," Jess said, evidently unmoved. "I have inner feelings of what I think is right, too. Right for Ramble . . . and right for me. I told you so . . . over and over." Her voice got huskier than usual, her words a little clumsier. "No one listened. Even I didn't listen—until now I see I'm the only one left who can. Tomorrow Dayna will be rested . . . Jaime's message board will still be blank. I will take her the information about SpellForge, and Ramble will be himself again."
"You're really going," Carey said. Suliya held her breath, hearing the catch in his voice. Bold Carey. Do-what-it-takes Carey. Head courier, suddenly sounding like someone else altogether. Someone grieving and torn and full of sorrow . . . someone who's brought it upon himself and knows it, and maybe just a touch of surprise to realize so. "Jess," he said. "Jess, I—"
"I know," Jess said, sounding just the same—but not. No surprise. Just regret and sorrow. "Carey, you put me where I have no choice. Not unless I spurn who I am, and then neither of us would like me."
That wrung a groan from him, but no protest. "I can't argue that," he said. "For someone who never used words until a few years ago, you have a way with them."
There was a pause, during which Suliya suddenly realized just how blatantly she'd eavesdropped, and how bad it would look if someone came this way to use the bathroom. She glanced around; not so much as a shadow darkening the hall entrance, or a skip in the rhythm of the conversation in the kitchen, which seemed to be about Mark's favorite tweak on Dayna right now—email versus the wizard dispatch.
Jess spoke again; she'd moved within the room, from one side to the other. Close to Carey, now. Sounding sadder than ever. "You never ride me as Lady anymore. You won't even talk about it."
Carey's silent scowl filled the air; Suliya might as well have been in there with them, seeing it. But it faded, and he said simply, "No. I don't." An answer to both statements . . . and to neither. There was another pause, one that puzzled her—until he spoke again, and this time his voice was rough with something other than sorrow, and slightly breathless as well. "This," he said, "is what I want you to think about right now. The way I love you. This is what I want you to take back with you when you're in Camolen without me."
And Jess murmured a response, but Suliya didn't catch it—and she was suddenly just as sure that neither had Carey, and that it was bootin' right timing to move away from the door.
Arlen woke.
For the moment, that was significant enough.
After his infringing awareness moved through dull perception of self to recognition of horse calling horse outside, the lumpy bed under his back, the bite of too-chill air against his nose and cheeks, and the truly wretched taste in his mouth, he finally put it all together.
The man. The road inn. Poor frightened Grunt. And the drug. Surely a miscalculated dose; his would-be abductor had wanted him pliable and unable to work magic, not dosed to insensibility. With a grimace, he worked his tongue around inside his mouth, and found not only did it fail to improve the situation, but that his mouth tasted equally bad in all parts of it.
It might, then, be time to open his eyes.
He did so cautiously, wincing at the alarming swirl of the canted ceiling—
No, wait. That was some previous generation's idea of style in textured ceiling presentation, not his perception. Offended but heartened, he lifted his head and discovered a tiny room with barely enough head room to stand. An attic room. His gear sat in an undignified pile by the door, clashing with the foil effect of the flower-dotted wallpaper; light streamed in a small round window with bright fuchsia drapings, and the bed covers someone had twitched over his clothed body were an astonishing yellow.
Arlen closed his eyes, put his arm over them, and muttered, "An exceptionally cruel awakening."
On the other hand, he was lucky to have woken up at all. And the sooner he forced his eyes open and got out of this bed, the sooner he could get out of this room. The sooner he would reach home.
The thought spurred him on, and he rolled out of bed, finding his limbs stiff and gawky but in working condition. After several attempts he draped his saddlebags and satchel over his person and stumbled out in desperate need of a bathroom.
When he finally found the road inn proprietor—bodily needs cared for, stomach full of the sideboard breakfast of vegetable bread and jams from the lobby—he didn't ask about the circumstances of his arrival and the woman didn't mention them; he paid his bill and he headed for the livery, hoping to find Grunt in at least as good a condition as himself.
Grunt greeted him with suspicious surprise—I know who threw that bucket—and went back to eating what was left of his morning hay. Skirting the dark bloodstains on the dirt floor, Arlen found the rest of his gear where he'd left it and settled down on an upturned bucket—the same bucket, cracked and worse for wear—to study his map and rub his upper lip in absent search for the still-missing mustache.
He'd been doing this the easy way. Small but substantial towns, skip-hopping his way back to Anfeald. Getting closer. Always a road inn to be found, usually space in the livery rings, and people had been friendly without either nosiness or suspicion.
Things would have to change.
No more magic outside of life-and-death circumstances; someone had found him once, and they could do it again. No more reaching out to Jaime, no matter how subtle the magic—I had her, burn it, I know I had her—no more foot-warming spells, not unless he purchased them.
At least the passing days and passing territory had brought with them slightly warmer weather, although that in turn promised to bring on mud—and with his newly planned, deliberately obscure route and the disturbed service system within Camolen, he doubted the road crews would be as vigilant as usual.
For whoever last night's assailant had been, the people behind him could easily conclude Arlen was headed for home. And since he was—and unwilling to change that goal—his only option was to get there by the least likely route possible.
Side roads. Nights in barns. Zigzagging the small trails and paths that made up ruralmost Camolen, varying his heading without varying his destination. "This," he told the map in complete disgruntlement, "is one of the reasons I became a wizard in the first place. To avoid such situations."
It wasn't entirely true. He was a wizard because he could hardly be else; he'd been spelling since he'd first learned how to lift his cousin's skirt in public at the age of three. Not, incidentally, when he also first learned that older and wiser minds could discern from just where a spell originated.
With a sigh, he folded the map and stuck it in the outermost pocket of his saddlebags, pried Grunt away from the faint wisps of remaining hay, and tacked the horse up, settling the bill as he led the horse out of the stable. He also paused to politely ask the attendant—not the same woman from the night before and thank the guides for that—where he might find Lilton Trail, after which he waited for the lad to duck back inside, and promptly headed in the opposite direction.
Walking fast.
By midday he found himself sitting on a rock—a dry rock, for which he counted himself lucky—staring at darkening slate clouds with the gloomy suspicion that they would bring not snow, but cold rain. He cut a round slab of spiced trail sausage from the long hunk he'd purchased at the edge of town, and when Grunt quit pawing the slush to uncover slumped winter grass to offer an inquiring huff, he let the horse take a good sniff.
Grunt wasted no time; he sucked the hard sausage into his mouth and chewed fast, as though he suspected Arlen might well go in after it; it was only after a few good hard chomps that the spice of it seemed to hit him, and he lifted his upper lip in a flehmen grimace of surprise.
But he never stopped chewing. And he took the second piece Arlen offered him, his nose twitching all the while.
"I have to give you this much credit," Arlen told him. "As a road partner, you do your share of the entertaining."
But Grunt, instantly aware of the moment he had no further chance for odd human food, went back to hunting out grass. Arlen fed himself, letting his gaze wander along the flattened landscape of north-central Camolen. Huge tracts of unclaimed land mixed with cultivated fields were still covered by traces of snow, though the peaks of the plow furrows were starting to poke through. Bright winter birds played along the edge of the road where the brush grew thick, scolding Arlen for daring to invade their sanctum. Big fat-footed hare tracks led across the field to his left, and the road stretched before him without a single recent track.
Perfectly normal. Perfectly quiet. If you didn't count the magic-hobbled wizard on the run and his rough-gaited, sausage-eating horse . . .
He hadn't ever been through this part of Camolen before. He'd been myopic, sequestered in Anfeald to push the edge of spell mastery, staying ahead of everyone else simply to protect everyone else.
Obviously, this time he'd failed. The whole Council had failed. Whatever had killed them, it was not something any one had anticipated. It may have even been related to something they'd approved—it wouldn't be the first time they missed a spell's side effect. Just before winter started, they'd approved that window-cleaning spell, unaware—as were the developers—that any building with enough sand content in its construction would become temporarily transparent as the spell was cast on its windows.
Too bad about that cheaply constructed brothel in Kymmet. "Really," he said to Grunt, not sounding convincing even to his own ears. "A shame the way they lost their entire customer list on the spot."
Grunt lifted his head to give Arlen a solemn stare, perceived that still no more sausage was forthcoming, and eased away to tease a few brush twigs into his mouth.
But he stopped in mid chew, his ears pricking sharply forward, the end of a tender branch sticking out the side of his mouth and forgotten. Arlen shoved the last of his wafer bread into his mouth, climbing to stand on his rock at the same time—even as he supposed it was probably the wisest course to hide under the rock and leave Grunt to fend for himself.
Grunt snorted—a harsh, sharp noise with an extra huff of exhalation at the end. Arlen didn't have to be Carey to understand that one. Alarm. An equine demand of who goes there.
Except Arlen didn't see anything. Looking as hard as he could right where Grunt had riveted his gaze, he saw absolutely—
Oh, here now. What was that?
Just on the other side of the road, nearly hidden behind the brush . . . he left Grunt rustling happily within the brush by his rock and approached the heaving bit of spontaneous goo with caution. This was exactly the sort of thing the Council had gone to look at—just "a disturbance"; nothing more. Nothing violent, just something strange enough to gather them all in the same spot to examine it.
He felt nothing from the goo. No sense of magic. Just what his eyes saw—although that alone was quite enough. After a moment, it stopped heaving and oozing, becoming a melon-sized spot of crackling hard ground and brush and snow, all swirled together and intermingled.
He wanted to enclose it in a spelled case and study it—but that would mean using magic, pure folly this close to the town in which he'd been attacked. Pure folly almost anywhere, until he reached his defenses at Anfeald.
Raw magic leaves no signature.
The thought made him grimace and rub his upper lip. He might have cast his first spell at the age of three, but at two he'd tickled the family dog with raw magic, causing a backlash that put him in bed for a week, left him under supervision for a year, and left his parents wary for several more. Worst of all, the dog had never approached him again—a fact that molded Arlen's perception of raw magic as strongly as all the years of indoctrination to follow.
Which didn't mean he couldn't handle it.
And, because it was the only thing left to him, he called up the smallest tendrils of raw magic and gave the quiescent blob a little poke.
Suddenly he was two years old again, stumbling backward from what he'd done, watching the blob explode into a frenzy of activity and knowing he had utterly no idea how to stop it. Grunt snorted loudly from across the road and Arlen bounded over to him, jerking his lead rope loose and hauling him down the road with Grunt snorting and jigging sideways at every step.
By the time Arlen looked back, the blob was quiet again . . . but no longer did it seem quiescent. No, now it . . . lurked, like so much wizard bait.
What if someone in the Council had thrown raw magic around?
Not likely. He was the most adventurous of them, the most radical. If anyone had done it, it would have been him . . . as he'd so neatly just proven.
Then . . .
What if someone else had done so.
Someone allied with the same people who had sent the man in the stable.
Maybe, maybe not. Supposition. Arlen turned his back on the unsettling blob and led Grunt down the road at a more sedate pace while the horse snorted wetly and let him know he was not forgiven for his unseemly behavior. All supposition.
And the real question remained unanswered.
From where had the blob come in the first place?
Carey left Jess still sleeping, loathe to wake her on this day when he'd find himself saying good-bye. She slept hard in dawn time, only the faintest hint of a frown between her brows to indicate her disquiet. He crouched by the bed a moment, stroking the black stripe of her bangs in her dun hair, trying without success to smooth that frown away. Braveheart. She'd always been that to him; she always would be.
But before long he felt a faint tickle in his chest and he stood so he wouldn't clear his throat in Jess's ear. He blamed that tickle for keeping his sleep light, but he somehow doubted even a spell could have put him into a solid sleep. Not the night before Jess, still so obviously connected to him, nonetheless felt driven to leave under circumstances when they both knew they might never see each other again.
Not with the magic so quirky . . . and with things clearly going off-trail in Camolen.
He thought of Wheeler's dead partner and grimaced to himself in the dim light of the guest room. He thought of Wheeler, and the grimace turned to an outright scowl. They should all go back—except with Dayna's repeatedly expressed need to tweak the magic for such a large group, and the admittedly faint possibility of prying more information from Wheeler—not a man who would follow them tamely to Camolen for their convenience if he chose otherwise.
So Jess would go back alone. Or not alone enough, depending on how he thought of Ramble.
Carey grabbed the top T-shirt off the pile Mark had provided him and, slipping out the door, tugged it over his head as he walked blindly down the hallway. There was always something about being the first one up in a dwelling full of people. Something special about the rare quiet time as he momentarily put his thoughts aside and moved about the kitchen, setting up the coffee maker for Dayna and Mark and pouring himself a cola. And something startling about the protective feeling that surged up in him, the desire to make himself a shield from anything that might wake them on this day that promised to be so hard.
Hard on Dayna, who had to find it within herself to hold together fraying magic . . . with the responsibility of her friend's life in the balance. And hard on Mark, who adored Jess like a younger sister and who had introduced her to her first Dairy Queen, her first bologna sandwich . . . and at her own request, her first kiss.
Hard on Jess, who'd been pushed past the breaking point with their human behavior and decisions.
And hard on him, even though he deserved every minute of it and more.
Only Wheeler—ostensibly asleep on the living room couch, although Carey wouldn't be surprised if he'd woken the moment Carey left the guest room—had little to lose with the day's events. And Ramble, with much to lose, didn't seem to comprehend the stakes; he knew only that Jess intended to take him home, and back to his natural form.
A cough nudged at him, so he flicked the coffee maker on and took his cola outside with a small plateful of thinly sliced turkey meat, a morning combination at which Dayna routinely made derisive noises. He went out to the back perimeter of the yard, by the neat, white board horse fencing on which he balanced his plate; there he watched the sky prepare for sunrise.
He wasn't surprised when Wheeler joined him, his arm neatly bandaged in lieu of the medical treatment he needed but which would draw the attention of the authorities, and bare to the waist in those expensive slacks which spurned wrinkles despite being used as sleepwear. Thus exposed, it became obvious that Wheeler's expensive clothes had served as camouflage, hiding not an average, plain body but a whipcord physique in outstanding condition. Carey tipped the soda to his mouth to hide the dark humor of the revelation. He hadn't stood a chance the day before, and he hadn't even known it.
Wheeler greeted him with nothing more than a nod, and stood in a silence remarkably companionable given the events between them. Knuckling his chest, Carey said without rancor, "Just how the hells hard did you hit me yesterday?"
Wheeler said, "Harder than you know. Luck ran with you on that one."
"Yeah, I felt lucky," Carey said mildly but with ultimate sarcasm. After another moment during which the purpled clouds brightened to orange-red and the flat Ohio horizon made way for the sun, he added, "I was a little surprised to find you were still here this morning."
"The sleeping accommodations weren't that bad," Wheeler said, so low key it took Carey a moment to realize there'd been humor hidden in his words. But without prompting, Wheeler added, "There are things happening here . . . more than I've been told. I'm sure my employers—" he glanced at Carey, seemed to recall there was no point in being coy about that particular point any longer, and backtracked to say, "I'm sure FreeCast and SpellForge had a reason for failing to provide me with complete information. But that doesn't mean I won't try to fill in the gaps—or that they don't know it. The chance they took is whether the missing information is significant enough to change the way I see things."
Carey snorted, cleared his throat, and said, "Isn't it always? When people in power leave out the details?"
Wheeler gave a short shake of his head. "Not necessarily. Sometimes they just don't think it matters. Sometimes they just don't have the time. It's not always a matter of hiding things . . . just of dismissing them or losing track of them."
"Your faith in them is stronger than mine," Carey muttered.
"Maybe," Wheeler said, in a voice that indicated or maybe not.
"And when you find the details—if you do—and if they lead you to believe your orders were right, what then?" Carey set the green plastic soda glass on top of a fence post and turned to put the newly exposed disk of the sun at his back, not caring that Wheeler had to squint at him. "You'd better know right now—" But he had to stop, to work through a series of deep, rale-filled coughs that took him by surprise. "Damn," he said, shooting Wheeler a look of deepest annoyance.
"Give it a few days," Wheeler said, not unsympathetically.
"You'd better know," Carey repeated, picking up where he'd interrupted himself, "as pathetic a threat as it must sound right now, that you'd better not turn on my friends. All your working ethics be damned, if you so much as look wrong at any of us—"
"If I ultimately believe my orders were given in good faith? No. I won't turn on you. That's not my style," Wheeler said, utterly believable simply because he didn't bother to turn on the intensity. Matter of fact.
Which is what made Carey's spine chill when Wheeler added, "Not unless you try to return to Camolen before I'm ready."