Lady circled through the rolling hills, easing through the scrub, placing her feet carefully on the slick ground and keeping an eye out for the goats and their shepherd. The drizzle stopped; the clouds broke away into patches of sunshine. Bright, hot sunshine, a closer sky than she was used to. She stopped, closed her eyes, and let the warmth of it beat against her face, waiting for some internal signal, some tug that would tell her in which direction lay home.
Except a horse thrown from one world to another needed the chance to establish her sense of direction before she could call upon it. She knew which way lay east and west . . . but without an awareness of where she stood, not in which of those directions lay Anfeald.
Ramble followed along in her wake, never crowding her but never leaving much distance between them, happy to snatch at forming leaf buds, happy to be a horse again, happy simply to be with her. Now and then he came in close, resting his chin on her back before moving away.
She let him.
Eventually she led him back to the hay and they grazed at it like old pasture buddies, and then the sun was slipping down over the horizon opposite the toothy mountains. As darkness fell, she eased down to doze on her chest, legs curled cat-like to one side and her nose resting on the ground, upper lip drawn up just enough so her front teeth took the weight of her head.
Ramble moved in close, standing over her. Guarding for her.
She let him.
In the darkness, in her dozing state, she hunted for the Jess within her. For the human thinking that might sort out the details she'd noticed today and discern if not her actual location, the direction in which she ought to travel. Sometimes she could find that voice . . . sometimes it came to her in faint, simple directions. Now it was silent. Silent and grateful for the respite, imparting to Lady that this confused and wounded part of her wanted nothing but the solitude this form gave it.
Lady gave a resounding snort in response and climbed abruptly to her feet, shaking herself off and swishing her tail in brief annoyance. Ramble, startled awake, shied respectfully away; upon recovering, he arched his neck and nickered and came back to her all light on his feet, both proud and cautious. Reaching her, he touched his chin to her back, lips twitching; after a moment he lightly groomed her withers while she nibbled hay.
She let him.
Before the sun rose, they fell to the hay again, leaving only scattered remnants for the wayward goats, and when Lady lifted her head from the meal, she hesitated for only an instant . . . and then led them away from the mountains. She didn't know the mountains; she'd never seen them. As unfamiliar as the rest of the territory looked, the mountains were even more so . . . and horse-like, right or wrong, her decision was made. Soon enough she found a path, trodden more by petite cloven hooves than man or horse, softer ground to save their unshod feet. She took it, winding through the hills, heading down away from the sun, pausing every couple of hours to browse on what forage she could find, ever mindful that Ramble had never been a courier's horse, never been introduced to rough country.
She showed him the knack of tucking his quarters to go down steep hills, and of using crabbing sideways steps when steep ground got slick. She showed him river crossings, with slow careful movement against fast current and deep water—and once, how to swim without panic. She introduced him to the buddy system when the small black flies swarmed, he who had spent so much of his life in stalls and alone; they stood nose to tail and kept each other's faces clear of the pests as they dozed.
They bucked themselves awake in the cold mornings, rolled as day cooled into evening, and snatched burgeoning spring greenery along the way. And though Lady, standing with her head high as if she could see all the way to Anfeald, had disturbing flashes of blood and Carey and urgency, for the most part . . .
She was a horse. No human rules shaping her equine behavior, no human puzzlements deviling the Jess in her. Just she and Ramble and days on the hoof, steadily heading for more settled territory and roads she hoped would take her to Anfeald.
Ramble, for the first time in his life fulfilled with activity and interaction, ceased to aim his mouth at everything in sight, and had no chance to act up out of boredom. He stayed polite and respectful and even worshipful, and when Lady felt the first restless signs of her season coming on, he courted her.
She let him.
Every morning after Arlen ate whatever rude meal he had available—sometimes cold cheese and sausage, sometimes hot homemade mealcakes—he checked Grunt's back for tender spots and carefully saddled and loaded their gear. And every morning Grunt never failed to lift his head from whatever rude meal he had available—sometimes forage, sometimes hay—to cast Arlen the most reproachful look he could muster.
"It's not far now, Grunt," Arlen would tell him. "Not far at all."
It was always a lie. But he didn't think Grunt ever caught on.
"Give it time," Mark announced.
"That's all they said?" Dayna asked skeptically, eyeing Carey.
Carey himself said nothing, aside from a baleful glance at Wheeler—who very wisely refrained from the I told you so to which he might have laid claim. After a day at Marion General Hospital in an expensive health care system that Mark took for granted but Carey found foreign, offensive, and occasionally frightening, he was in no mood for I told you so. Especially when he hadn't wanted to go in the first place.
"Did they buy your story?"
"It would have helped if I had the faintest idea what flag football is," Carey said.
"A game—"
"You said. They wanted details. Concussive hemoptysis, they called it, and couldn't find any bruises, so they wanted details—they thought it might have been caused by some disease process and not a game."
Mark waved a dismissive hand. "I told them we'd gotten too manly and fire-snorting; they bought it. And the tests didn't show anything else."
"I would be astonished," Carey said with weary dignity, suppressing the now miserable ever-present impulse to cough simply because once he started, there'd be blood before he stopped, "if your health care tests could detect an expired composting spell."
"So they said give it time," Dayna repeated.
"And no more football, take it easy, report back if it gets worse or fails to get better, and follow up with my own doctor when I get back home," Carey said, adopting a dutiful tone.
Dayna gave him a dark look, blue eyes shadowed by her lowered brow and down-tilted head. "Home," she muttered. "I'm working on it."
They were two horses as if they'd never been anything else, and if Lady's message cannister hadn't rolled and bumped against her shoulder with her movement, she might have forgotten the complexity of her own nature.
A courier. On the job, and forging her way through remote, unfamiliar territory to reach her home stable. Avoiding hazards, avoiding people, letting Ramble claim her for his own—with Lady making their decisions and Ramble fully occupied making sure no other stallion had the chance to steal her away.
Given their isolation, he'd gotten a little desperate; she'd once seen him posturing to a baffled deer, and he filled the unfamiliar territory with ringing calls any time he scented a stray mining pony or a farmer's plow animal. He had no Jess-voice in his head, cautioning quiet—a voice that drove Lady to jog away at a ground-eating pace no matter the terrain when he pulled such nonsense, until he had to choose between keeping his noise and keeping up.
He always chose keeping up.
After a time the downhill travel leveled out, the paths and trails turned to rutted roads—travelways without anything but the most rudimentary spell protection, full of potholes and wheel ruts and blessed with a centerline of thick, early-blooming wildflowers, most of which were delicious. The trees grew taller and thicker, and their tender tips tasted less acidic than those over which Ramble had been making faces. Along with the dried stems of the previous fall's grasses, they began to find the first spears of new grass—and, by now plagued by constant hunger, they slowed to search out these greens. Once or twice upon passing farmland, Lady found ways to circumvent the fencing and they snatched a clandestine meal among herds of cattle which ignored them. Once or twice—more frequently, now—they came upon areas of strange and contorted landscape from which they bolted away with great drama, returning to their original direction miles later and with no ill effect.
After a time . . .
She lost her interest in Ramble's attentions, quite abruptly no longer feeling the need. Ramble stopped guarding her quite so jealously and began to treat her more gently, more protectively—more warily, as well he might any mare in foal.
And Lady was content. Despite the unending search for enough food, the ribby look of her sides and the ragged condition of her hooves, she was content. Relentless travel aside, she was content. Content enough that one day after too many days for a horse to count, she looked at Ramble and looked at the pleasant spring-fed glade through which they traveled and she had the sudden impulse to stop. To stop traveling, to stay here and eat her fill day after day, swishing flies from Ramble's face and nibbling the itches at his withers, taking off into fits of sudden bucking play any time she pleased, and pretending not to notice when the small, battered, black cylinder taped and sewn to her mane finally fell off.
The horror of it hit her like a weighted quirt.
Blood. Carey. Arlen dead. Her friends in trouble. All of Camolen in trouble.
Depending on her.
She shied at nothing in the middle of the perfect glade, violently startling aside to race away with her tail clamped tight and her ears laid back. Ramble, sure they were under attack, startled in the opposite direction.
And Lady ran. Vaulting fallen branches and sudden dips, dodging thickets . . . she ran like a horse driven, unable to slow until finally she tired, failed to see a root hump, and tumbled, rolling over her shoulder and slamming up against a tree, her legs in the air like a bug on its back.
Noble courier mare.
Besieged by thoughts and emotions too complex for a horse to process or even outrun, she reacted instinctively to save her own sanity. She reached for the familiar touch of the spellstone braided into her upper mane and—
She changed.
So many days of living as a horse—for all practical purposes, a wild horse—had left its mark on her. Her skin stretched tightly over her ribs; her thick, coarse hair no longer hung evenly down her back but fell ragged, as when she'd first become Jess. Her tough feet felt worn and tired, her bare skin absurdly sensitive to the air and to the leaf mat beneath her back. And even human, she found herself so overcome with so many different emotions that she simply rolled over to her side, curled up, and cried. So much intensity to fit inside one frail human body . . . fury and fear and sorrow and worry and guilt, so much guilt . . .
And all the implications of the changes within herself. As Lady she'd known instinctively; even Ramble had known. As Jess she knew with both her heart and mind. She covered her low stomach with long fingers splayed out, found it as flat as ever. Too flat. But she knew what triggered that protective, possessive gesture.
That which she had wanted so badly. That which she'd thought to conceive as a woman, to carry as a woman, to bear as a woman.
The child she'd wanted—they'd wanted—but not of Carey. Never of Carey, never of any human.
She thought she'd known all along that this was the way it would have to be, and she'd been unable to face it. Unable to bear the conversation with Carey . . . just as she didn't know how she could tell Carey of this new life within her . . . this legacy of hers, and of the changespell that had brought her together with Ramble.
She wondered if he'd realize the irony of it . . . that this child, whatever form it took, had happened only because of Carey's own decision to change Ramble to a human for his own purposes—and then because of his inability to accept the limits she set when that change led to naught.
No answers. No easy new human life for Ramble. No understanding, not between Carey and Ramble, not between Carey and Jess.
Only between Jess and Ramble.
Exhausted, more so than she could ever remember, Jess slept. And when she woke, cold and stiff and cramped, she hunted through herself to find all her emotions drained for the moment, the storm faded down to something she could live with. More importantly, something Lady could live with. She studied the terrain, the types of trees, the soil, the roughly uneven ground, and put the observations in context with everything she'd seen since arriving so far from Anfeald. Southeast. Very east, to start with. And they'd traveled roughly west; time to add a northern slant, and see if she couldn't recognize the next main road they hit.
On the way to Anfeald. No more wavering, no more lingering in pleasantly perfect glades. Shivering now, Jess fixed her purpose in her mind, most firmly in her mind . . .
And triggered one of the changespells to take her back to Lady. To find Ramble . . . to find Anfeald. And maybe along the way to find herself.
Jaime lost track of the time—days and hours and weeks, all of which were subtly different from those of her own world.
She found it easier that way. Not because of the differences, but because it dulled the part within herself that noted the exact passage of time and tried to calculate the odds that Arlen was okay and yet had still not contacted anyone.
But Arlen wasn't stupid. If he—if any—of the Council wizards had survived, he could certainly figure just as well as she that his best chance of future survival—and of figuring out the mess in which Camolen found itself—was to hole up and play dead.
Just not this dead, Arlen. Not this long.
But then again, she wasn't paying attention to the time. She wasn't. She wasn't wondering why she hadn't heard anything from Carey, Dayna, and Jess, especially after the most recent arrival-magic over which she'd recently been questioned. She wasn't wondering why late winter had turned into spring and she still found herself alone here, running the hold with Natt and Cesna and Linton while the new Council—she'd never think of them as anything but the new Council—hid behind its secure walls in Kymmet and still, as far as anyone could tell, was no closer to understanding why the Council had died in the first place, or why even everyday spells now often went awry.
She didn't wonder about any of those things. She kept an eye on the pregnant mares, most of whom were so close to foaling they wore Camolen's spell equivalent of a foal monitor and spent their nights inside the foaling barn behind the hold while the year's maiden mare lived in the very stall from which Ramble and the others had left for Ohio. She tended her map, a project that—along with Anfeald's decently central location—had helped to turn the hold into a central courier hub of sorts. The place where people sent their news when they felt it was of general interest . . . and the place people came to get it. For Jaime with her map was the one to understand first that the new Council wasn't having any luck with understanding the meltdowns simply because they were never out and about with a chance to see one in process—and that they couldn't attempt a source trace until that happened.
Jaime was the one to realize that if the new Council did attempt a source trace, they probably wouldn't accomplish it anyway—not on a non-spell magical effect of such heretofore unknown properties. The people with those skills were dead.
She was one of the first to see the pattern when the communication and travel services problems changed from being a manpower problem—no one in place to run the upper levels of the dispatch and travel booth activity—to being a process problem—those who were now in place now encountered problems and setbacks the system had evolved to avoid. Dependable magic going wrong. People being blamed when magic was the problem.
More was askew than just the meltdowns.
Most information, Jaime passed along freely. But when she came to her own conclusions, when she saw the patterns no one else had yet seen . . . those, she kept to herself. Let it become general knowledge when someone else figured it out—someone like a precinct lander, whose job was to shepherd and protect the people in the first place. Jaime, seeing what she saw, had no desire to face the questions that would come if she mentioned what seemed to her to be obvious.
So she watched the mares, tended the map, kept copies of general messages for disbursement to anyone who wanted them, and—possibly most important of all—kept Arlen's puzzled cats company. As much as they adored Jess, as much as they slyly worshiped Arlen, pretending it was coincidence that they ended up wherever he did, they'd ever only disdainfully tolerated Jaime . . . until now.
Now they slept on her face.
Even when she came up to Arlen's quarters only long enough to fling herself on the couch with her booted legs hanging over the end, resting her eyes against another round of message sorting and copying, they managed to find their way to her, oozing along the windowsill, creeping out from the bedroom. . . .
The older black-and-white cat had always been a shy little thing; she merely sat on the back of the couch and stared at Jaime. The jester of a calico inevitably ended up on her chest, paws tucked, so close to Jaime's face that his breath tickled the soft spot under her chin.
And so he was when Jaime heard Cesna approaching the open door to Arlen's rooms, quiet in her soft slippers, hesitating at the entrance . . . taking in a soft breath, not bringing herself to interrupt, trying again—
The cats leapt from their self-appointed vigil over Jaime, hurrying to the entrance with no trace of standoffish waffling; the calico tuned up his conversational voice and put it to good use.
Not Cesna.
Jaime's eyes flew open.
She couldn't say anything at first; she couldn't do anything but gape.
Jess.
Jess in hay-specked winter clothes from her changing stall, her feet bare and battered, her hair an unruly tangle, the bones of her face strong beneath gaunt features, her eyes carrying a touch of panic and uncertainty. Enough that Jaime didn't act on her rush of joy, didn't bound up from the couch to throw her arms around the friend whose reappearance meant Jaime herself was no longer so alone.
She levered herself upright on the couch, swinging her legs one by one from over its arm to a normal sitting position. And she said quietly, "Jess, it's so good to see you. Will you come in?"
Even in her first few days as a woman, Jess hadn't shown such hesitance, such wariness. She'd been full of curiosity and trust and frustration, desperate to find Carey and to make herself understood . . . but not this wildness. She took a step into the room, a single step, and held out a trembling hand—one of broken nails, bruises, and grime. It took Jaime a moment to realize what else she looked at within that hand—a film cannister. Black, but covered with worn silver duct tape to which stuck a proliferation of dark dun hairs.
Jaime stood and held out her own hand, making it simple; she would not chance a move that might scare this flighty version of Jess away; Jess would have to come to her. And after a hesitation, Jess did. Enough of a hesitation that Jaime worked a few swift facts into place. Chandrai's latest visit provided the key—the information that someone had worked Arlen's world-travel spell in the eastern fringes of Camolen. And here was Jess, as wild as a horse from the range, offering a film cannister. A message cannister, battered and worn and long carried.
It was all she could do to keep herself from bursting into questions—when did you get back, why are you alone, what happened to the others, what did you find out—but she had no doubt they'd chase Jess off as surely as any sudden movement. So she accepted the cannister Jess tipped into her hand, worked the tape free with the help of her pocket knife, and pulled out a much-folded and rolled but well-preserved piece of paper, printed on both sides in various fonts and then covered with clear packing tape in crude lamination.
As Jess eased back a step, Jaime sat down and sorted out what she had. Short comments from everyone who'd gone to Ohio, each in a different tiny font—and one from her brother. Hard enough to read in English on this side of the travel spell, never mind such compact, intense notes. Notes confirming that the message board system no longer worked, that the farm was doing fine and that Mark missed her and worried about her, that Ramble had told them nothing of import—but that Suliya recognized one of the men about whom Jaime herself had managed to warn them, and he'd come via SpellForge, provided by FreeCast. Watch out for them, Carey had said. Don't trust them.
As if she hadn't figured that part out for herself, even without a name to put on her odd visitors.
Still, it was something to pass along to Chandrai as soon as she could. SpellForge, as unlikely as it seemed, had some involvement in whatever was happening.
She smoothed the taped-up paper over her thigh, tasting bitter disappointment high in her throat and knowing she'd hoped for more. Had hoped, without admitting it even to herself, that Ramble had seen Arlen escape harm.
The wait wasn't over yet, then. Maybe it would never be over. Maybe she'd always lift her head, half expecting to see him whenever someone entered the room she occupied.
She took a steadying breath and turned her attention back to Jess. Wild Jess, still looking as if she might bolt at any moment. "Jess," Jaime said. "Are you all right?" She opened a hand in a welcoming gesture, one without any demand in it at all, just an invitation; Jess edged closer, not a direct approach—but when she made up her mind, she came all the way, kneeling by the couch as was her habit of old, a searching expression on her face as she hunted for words and didn't find them. Finally she just shook her head.
"It's okay," Jaime said. "We'll get things sorted out. It doesn't have to happen right this minute."
And to her surprise, Jess heaved a sigh—a very horse-like sigh with a flutter of noise at the back of her throat—put her head on the couch, and almost instantly fell asleep.
Jess woke to the gentle sensation of someone scratching between her shoulder blades, so like the congenial nibble of teeth at her withers that her first sleepy thought was Ramble until she startled herself by realizing that in thinking it at all, she'd shown herself human. Not Lady, as she'd been for so many days. Jess. Not Ramble beside her, but Jaime. As much as anyone, Jaime could read Jess's equine body language; as much as anyone, she could respond on that level.
And so she'd given Jess space, and not pushed her when she was on the verge of bolting, so closed in by stone and her own human body here in the hold. She'd just made space for her, and Jess had moved into it, all but ready to collapse with one of the fits of exhaustion that had dogged her recently. And now she made the waking up easy.
"Better?" Jaime asked as Jess lifted her head, shoving her hair out of her face. It didn't get lank and oily, not as Carey's did if he failed to wash it, but it was grimy and she was suddenly acutely aware of how well the rest of her matched its condition.
"Better," she said, and she was. Not as shaky as when she'd stood in the doorway, her equine companion of the past days lurking in one of the far pastures, her nerve threatening to desert her. Never had she stayed so long as Lady since she'd become Jess. Never had she been so long from people, not since Carey had first watched her stand on shaky foal legs. And while her world changed within her, she'd also watched it change without. Watched the distorted areas grow more frequent, watched the strange patterns of activity on the roads. Nothing was the same . . . not Camolen, not the people she knew within it, not her own self.
As a creature who found solace in habit, Jess found it all disturbing. Enough to shake her already rattled confidence.
Enough so she almost hadn't made it up those stairs to find Jaime at all.
But now . . . "Better," she said again, and nodded.
"Good," Jaime said. "Can we talk, then?" She waved the taped-up paper gently through the air. "This leaves me with a lot of questions."
Jess pulled herself up on the couch, delighted at the immediate appearance of both cats. The calico turned himself upside-down in her lap and gave her a look of surprised annoyance when she didn't immediately commence to roughing him up. The older cat, more demure, eased onto the back of the couch and purred. Occupied but not distracted by them, Jess said, "There are no answers to give you. The paper says everything we know."
"It doesn't say why you're here and they're not. Why you're the only one who came back."
"I'm not the only one," Jess said, wondering if she imagined the slight sting of accusation in Jaime's voice. "Ramble came back. I brought him back. They turned him human to learn what he knew, and he knew nothing. He suffered there. I brought him back."
"I can see why you came back," Jaime said, impatience on her face along with a certain ingrained weariness. Her carefree hairstyle had grown out in shiny, deep brown waves; now it merely looked shaggy, no longer spunky. But she didn't need to look spunky. She had a confidence in her place here that she hadn't carried when Jess had left. She was no longer a guest . . . she was a working part of this hold. One with authority—and she was trying not to use it on Jess, but she wanted those answers.
Jess didn't have them all. But she had some of them. She ignored the growl of her stomach to say, "Other people came from Camolen, like you warned. They tried to take us away." The notes she'd brought from Ohio had said that much, even mentioned Wheeler by name. "Wheeler said the others were safer to stay. And Dayna said she couldn't make the spells work for so many without more time. She had to use extra magic so Ramble and I could return. She didn't have enough."
"So they didn't come back. But they've had the chance—you've been here for—?" She scrunched her face slightly with the question.
"I don't know," Jess admitted. "Many days. The magic was . . . skewed. It returned us to an edge part of Camolen. Far away."
"No wonder you're so tired," Jaime said. Jess knew there was another reason, but didn't speak up . . . suddenly realized she wasn't sure she'd speak up at all, not about that. Jaime picked the cannister up from her lap and turned it over in her hand. "At least you made it. We've got some parts of Camolen we can't reach any more."
"What is it?" Jess asked. "All these days gone by . . . doesn't anyone know what the bad spots are? What happened to the Council?"
"The meltdowns," Jaime mused, and then shook her head. "No, no one knows what's causing them. Thanks to the information you brought, I've already initiated a message to the Council, telling them SpellForge is involved somehow. And I'll tell the peacekeepers—not that they're not already maxed out just trying to keep up with the riots that have started up along with everything else."
Jess didn't know maxed out, but she got the gist of it. And riots . . . "Things are bad enough already," she said. "Why would people make them worse?"
Jaime shrugged. "Fear, mostly."
Jess couldn't help the frown at the grown-familiar frustration within herself. The inability to understand how people hurt each other. Frightened horses would run. They'd band together for protection. They wouldn't destroy things and strike out at each other. "I'm going," she said suddenly.
Jaime didn't hide her surprise, the widening of her Mark-like eyes. "Going?"
"I left Ramble in one of the pastures. I told him I'd come back."
"Jess, I don't . . ." Jaime hesitated, held out a hand in what looked like supplication. "You just got here. I've missed you, I've missed you all. We need you here. I don't understand—"
"Why I would go back to be with a horse? As a horse?" Anger seeped out, but it wasn't at Jaime, wasn't fair to make Jaime think it was. She watched Jaime closely, trying to gauge her expression and reaction. "I thought I understood some things about being human, but I didn't. I thought I understood some things about being friends . . . about being lovers—but I didn't. I can no longer be certain of my friends, and without that, I am not sure of the point in being human. In trying so hard to learn what it's all about." She shook her head; Jaime had gone from looking puzzled to frowning in a most unhappy way. "I need time," Jess said, then nodded at the cannister that had been bumping against her shoulder for so long and bore every sign of it. "I have done what I can. Now I will go do something for me. And for Ramble. He needs me, too. If you let us, we will use the furthest fields, the ones Carey was going to leave fallow this year. If not . . . we will find a place."
"Let you!" Jaime cried, comprehension beginning to dawn. She'd lost Arlen . . . in a way, she was about to lose Jess. "Of course I'll let you! I can't believe—I wish—" She stopped, clenching her hand around the film cannister, a hand that only moments ago would have reached for Jess instead, still wanted to reach for her now. But Jess had put distance between them with her words. Had removed Jaime's ability to take for granted their relationship, just as Carey and Dayna had removed Jess's ability to rely on their support and presence. Finally Jaime blurted, "But what about Carey?"
Jess didn't react. Or rather, she tried not to. But the calico was not to be fooled; he sensed her sudden tension and leapt lightly away, boxing the ears of the little black-and-white cat on the way. Carefully, Jess said, "Carey isn't here. And if he makes it back . . ." She stopped, took a considering breath, and wished the cat were still in her lap, giving her his warmth and affection. "There are some things he never accepted about who I am. He tried to pretend it wasn't so, but . . . I don't think he'll want anything to do with me now."
Jaime didn't understand. Not with that look on her face, the taken-aback, eyebrows drawn together over worried eyes. She might have been about to ask . . . but she hesitated on her words, and what eventually came out was, "Will you at least eat something? Rest again before you go? You look done in, Jess."
She was done in. But she was also through traveling, and could spend her days in a secure field that, not so far in the future, would hold more grass than she and Ramble could eat in a summer of grazing. She would be all right. They would be all right. Still, she gave Jaime a thoughtful, faraway look and said, "Eat something, yes. I have a sudden want for those spicy chicken parts you taught the cook to make."
She didn't think she could have startled Jaime any more . . . but without removing that startled gaze from Jess—expecting to be corrected at any time, no doubt, by this friend who eschewed meats and strong seasonings—Jaime contacted the kitchen and ordered the Buffalo chicken wings. Jess ate two servings.
And then she left, cantering out of the stable on worn black hooves, the cannister no longer bumping at her shoulder.