Duainfey (14 page)

Becca took the proposed treat and stepped up to the fence, her mood suddenly lifting, as if she had just stepped from deep, winter dark, into the full blare of summer.

"Good day, Rosamunde," she murmured and smiled at the flick of expressive ears. "Would you do me the honor of accepting this?" She offered the carrot across the palm of her hand.

Disconcertingly, the horse did not immediately attend the carrot, but looked into Becca's face, for all the world as if she were judging her.

"Lord Quince," Becca murmured, keeping the carrot on offer, "has kindly thought that you and I might suit. I would . . ." She paused, and the large eyes never left her face, as if there was an intelligence beyond the mere equine listening to her words.

"I would," Becca said, the words coming from her very heart, "very much like it if you would consent to be my mount."

There was a small silence, and a certain . . . warmth, as if someone had lit a candle in the center of her chest. Then Rosamunde bent her beautiful head and lipped the carrot off of Becca's hand.

"I'd take that as an acceptance, myself," Lord Quince said comfortably.

Becca took a breath, her eyes on the elegant curve of the filly's neck.

"Was her grandsire as . . . attentive?" she asked.

"Fey horses are . . . extraordinarily perceptive," a cool, accented voice said from close at hand. "The beautiful lady is quarter-Fey. Surely, she listens, and judges—and determines for herself where her power is best allied."

"Altimere." She turned, her heart suddenly soaring.
Here,
she thought.
There is a choice.

The tall Fey leaned on the fence beside her, and smiled.

"Good day, Miss Beauvelley," he murmured. "It is a pleasure to see you again. Lord Quince."

"Altimere," said his lordship in his bluff way. "M'wife tells me we're losing your company."

"It is so, I fear," the Fey said. "My business here is complete, and I am wanted in my own land."

"Well, I'll be sorry to see the back of you," Lord Quince said. "You still thinking of that parcel up near Eastkirk?"

"I am. Indeed, I plan to pass by again on my return, and to speak to Mr. Smythe regarding his price."

"He's asking high," Lord Quince said, and it was clear to Becca that both men had forgotten her presence. She leaned closer to the fence and raised her hand to stroke Rosamunde's soft nose. A feeling of satisfaction filled her, and she narrowed her eyes in pleasure.

"Still," his lordship went on, "even if you meet his price, you'll make it back inside a season. I can't think of a man of my acquaintance who wouldn't want one of those horses of yours!"

"I may do well enough for a few seasons," Altimere murmured. "However, I think I may soon be redundant."

"Horses producing more of themselves, as they're wont to do," Lord Quince said. "I see your point, but I'm thinking that what you need to do during those first few years is fix it in folks' heads that the man to go to for the real thing, no imitations, not side breeding, nothing but pure blood Fey—" He stabbed an emphatic forefinger at Altimere's chest—"is yourself."

"You fascinate me. Perhaps we should ally ourselves in this matter."

"I tell you what, that's not a bad notion at all! You write me once you've got everything set the way you want it and I'll—yes, Dobbs, what is it?"

"It's the bay, sir. You asked to be told the next time he loosed that front shoe by stepping on with his back foot in the walk ring."

"Blast!" Lord Quince nodded curtly to his guests. "I'll be just a moment. Sorry, but this has to be tended to immediately!" And with that he strode off, hard on the heels of the stable boy.

Becca sighed, and shivered, suddenly queasy in her stomach. Surely, such a meeting was fated?

If only she believed in fate.

"Altimere," she said softly, stroking Rosamunde's nose the while.

"Miss Beauvelley. How may I serve you?"

She turned, deliberately, to face him, her hand falling from Rosamunde's nose to grip the fence.

"I would like," she said, keeping her voice steady by long practice. "I would like very much to embrace the second possible future you showed to me."

"Ah, indeed?" He looked down at her. "We have said that the customs of your land are not the customs of my own, so I will ask, in order to be certain: You offer to ally with me; to place your
kest
—your power—in my hands?"

Her power,
thought Becca, and might have laughed, had Rosamunde not blown lightly against her hair.

"I place my power, my honor, and my future in your hands," she told, and if her voice shook, who could blame her? It was a terrible step she was about to take—and, yet, to find succor, where she had been so certain that all was lost . . . 

"The small, angry man?" Altimere said. "He has been informed that he will not profit from an alliance?"

"He has—not." Becca swallowed. "I—if I tell him so, my father will lock me in my room until the day of the wedding, which is—very soon, now. A matter of days. I—if you accept my—my alliance—we will have to go secretly—swiftly and with the possibility of pursuit."

Altimere looked, faintly, amused, but his voice was brisk. "It is well that the moon is just past full, and fortunate that Quince has bestowed upon you this horse." He glanced at the cloudless sky. "If you are able, we may leave tonight at moonrise. Say to Quince that you will come for the horse later; I will bring her to you."

"Yes," breathed Becca, "thank—but her tack, I don't—"

"Leave all to me. For yourself, you need bring only those things which are necessary to your
kest,
but nothing more than will fit in a saddlebag. You will not need jewelry, or coins, or any medium of trade or exchange."

Becca looked up at him. "But, how will I purchase—"

"You have allied yourself with
me,
" he said, and there was a note of arrogance on that last word. "I will provide those things which are needful."

"I—see." Her heart quailed, but Rosamunde blew again, a gust of warmth against her ear, and she giggled instead.

"The beautiful lady has heart and courage for two," Altimere said, and looked over Becca's head. "The excellent Quince returns to us. Moonrise, at the servants' door. I will be there for you."

He turned away, calling out a question to Lord Quince. Becca leaned into Rosamunde and closed her eyes, letting the warmth of her mount's regard soothe her spirit and calm her racing heart.

The chyarch was found in a bower of sandelkirk, a book on her knee and a wood's cat curled at her feet. She looked up at his approach, and dismissed the attendant with a nod. He bowed, the performance of which courtesy gave him time to recover from his surprise.

It was most usually the Elder Fey who were called to the healing arts. While it was not impossible to find one of the Wood Wise among the healers, yet it was—unusual.

That one such would rise to chyarch—that was unlikely, for the Wood Wise dislike confinement and are happiest when they rove.

"Chyarch," he murmured respectfully, straightening from his bow.

"Meripen Vanglelauf," she replied, marking her place and setting the book aside. "I would have had you sleep for some while longer. Alas, I have been overruled." She pulled a roll of birch paper from her sleeve and sat holding it in her hand, considering him gravely. Her eyes were pale—grey with a touch of brown, like bark seen through morning mist—her aura a faint shimmer of autumn yellows.

"The Lady of Sea Hold sends for you, by name. Perforce, you must be wakened and set upon the way."

He blinked. "The Lady of Sea Hold?" he repeated the phrase as if the sleep, or what had gone before, had robbed him of sense.

"Indeed," the chyarch said solemnly. "Precisely that most gracious and puissant Lady."

"I—" He paused, trying to think. Unlike some of the Forest Gentry, he had no fear of leaving the land. Indeed, his own mother had ranked as a captain among the Sea Wise, and he had learned the lore of wave and wind at her side. That he had accepted the duties of the Wood Wise was more accident than destiny. He knew and was acknowledged by kin on the seaward side, and had been fostered at Sea Hold in his youth. The last he had known, however, Sea Hold had rejoiced in a lord—one Velpion, whose title had been, properly, Engenium. To find that there was now a
lady
in that dour Elder's place . . . 

He wondered again how long he had been inside the healing sleep.

"Forgive me," he said to the chyarch. "Why does the . . . lady . . . send for me?"

She shrugged. "I had hoped perhaps you would know what urgency drives her. But it would seem not." She held out the roll of bark. "You may read for yourself what she writes. And then, if you feel able, you may draw what you need from stores and—"

"No." He said flatly, hands fisting at his sides as he recalled what he must do.

The chyarch raised an eyebrow. "Could you be more explicit?"

"I cannot go to Sea Hold," he said. "There is a matter of duty which must be satisfied before—"

"Yes, yes . . ." She waved the bark at him, impatiently. "It's all in here. I am, in a word,
commanded
to wake you and to send you forth. It may be argued—persuasively, for your reputation precedes you, Ranger—that I cannot be responsible for where you go once you leave here, but leave here you must and shall. And I do think, myself, that you will go to Sea Hold."

Goaded, he snatched the bark, unrolled it, glared—and blinked.

You will,
he read,
awaken my cousin Meripen Vanglelauf and put him on his way to Sea Hold as he is needed here. This by the hand of Sian, Engenium.

He read the brief message in the bold, plain hand again—and a third time.
Sian
had risen to rule Sea Hold? But Sian was—He looked up to find the chyarch watching him, her eyes holding a certain foggy amusement.

"Forgive me," he said again, though his voice was abrupt in his own ears. "How long—"

"Ah." She bowed her head. "Nine thousand nights have passed since you came here, raving, powerless, and very nearly dead. Your wounds were terrible; we thought at first that we would lose you to them. As it came about, the burns and the abuse were not the worst of it. I would have had you sleep longer, a full ten thousand nights, to equal the sleep of Jonga, Ranger, and then I would not have sent you to Sea Hold, but deep into the Vanglewood. However, as you read—" a flutter of fingers at the message he still held—"my wishes count for naught.

"I do most earnestly counsel you to obey the Engenium's summons of your own will, for she has also provided me with this, in case you should prove . . . recalcitrant." She reached into the pocket of her vest and withdrew a cord of braided seaweed, an ordinary fessel shell suspended from it, the compulsion woven into it so strong that Meripen shivered where he stood.

The chyarch nodded. "It is no gentle invitation the Lady of Sea Hold sends you, Ranger, but a stern order. Be prudent, I beg, for I do not wish to be the one to place this burden upon you."

Standing there among the plants and live things, Meripen acknowledged that he felt not the slightest stirring of
kest
. Should the chyarch apply her will—which she had not done, and which, so he read in her face, she did not desire to do—he would be powerless to resist her.

Stiffly, he bowed.

"It would seem that I have no choice," he murmured. "I will draw what I need and be gone before moonrise."

The chyarch sighed. "Haste is needful," she agreed. "Headlong flight is not. Take time to eat, and to rest again after you have assembled your kit. Sunrise will be soon enough to set out."

Sonet's herbal she would not leave behind, nor her own, nor could she travel without easewerth, aleth or fremoni, or the few packets of seeds, including Sonet's gift of duainfey, she had on hand. Which left little enough room for clothes and womanly necessities. In the end, she bundled a single change of clothing together in her heaviest, most serviceable shawl. Happily, her day-clothes had been tailored with her handicap in mind; her riding shirt laced, and while the split skirt did require buttoning, she had a buttonhook for just that purpose. By necessity, she wore her hair loose. It would be well enough, she thought, with the cloak fastened over it—and in any wise, there was nothing else she could do.

Her boots were the worst, and by the time she had them on, she was shaking with effort, her ruined arm aching up into her back teeth.

It was then—just then—as she sat there, aching and weak, that she bethought herself of what she was about to do.

What, in truth, did she know of Altimere? That he was Fey and—how had Harin said it? Not human-folk. Yes, and her grandmother, who had seemed to have a fondness for them, still warned her granddaughter never to trust them.

And yet, Becca thought, what choice had she? She might very well question Altimere's "small power," and put the scene she had been "shown" in the wine cup down to exhaustion, or hypnotism, or hysteria—any of that, or all of it. What she could
not
do, however, was to discount the evidence of her own senses. Jennet had
meant
to hurt her. Nor did his manner of demanding an apology—an abject apology, far out of proportion to her misstep . . . 

Having seen Jennet thus, the future in the wine cup, however it had been formed, seemed to her possible, even probable. Whether he knowingly wished her ill, or was merely possessed of a . . . masterful nature . . . 

"No," she whispered to the dim room, "it will not do."

Better by far to trust Altimere, who was odd, though no more a stranger than her promised husband, who had furthermore offered her no harm, and indeed seemed to have some concern for her welfare. Traveling in his company would ruin her, of course, but she was accustomed to that.

The clock in the entrance hall struck the hour, its chimes reverberating throughout the house. Becca stood and dragged her cloak on, clumsily one-handed; twisted the brooch shut, and picked up her parcel.

It was time. Whatever doubts and dangers attended this night, she would meet them as they arose.