A Turn of Light (48 page)

As for Wyll . . .

Young Uhthoff had named him the penitent and punished. Wyll having admitted being cruelly maimed by his own, Bannan’s urge to pity died stillborn. What did he know of dragons and their justice? Wyll might be guilty. As for him being transformed by Jenn’s wish? That, from what he could see, was more an impediment to his hopes than penalty to the dragon, who appeared to manage quite well. Maybe better than a man turned dragon, if such were possible.

Duty. Honor. Bannan knew what those meant to him. What were they to Wyll?

The grief he’d seen for himself, felt still. That terrible grief. What had Wyll lost, besides wings?

The truthseer took a deep breath and shook his head. The dragon had stared after Jenn Nalynn like a man lost in the dark would look to a solitary distant light. That he was her guardian, Bannan could believe. That there was more than duty to his faithfulness?

He wasn’t blind.

But was that duty to Jenn’s benefit? There was a thought to draw gooseflesh from skin despite the warmth.

He’d ask—he’d dare that much—but Wyll had gone too, lurching through the farmyard to the path to Night’s Edge, disappearing beyond the tall grass. Though he’d claimed he couldn’t repair the damage, maybe he went to try. She’d asked, after all.

And now the focus of so much turmoil was in his barn, grooming his—Bannan shrugged and smiled to himself. Grooming Scourge, who’d never been his, and whose interruption had been suspiciously compassionate.

Making his choice, for better or worse, Bannan followed Jenn Nalynn.

“I wish you’d stop complaining,” Jenn complained.

“I’ll stop,” the breeze informed her, a red glint in the beast’s night-dark eye, “when you leave me to suffer in peace!”

The eye was well over her head, as was most of where Scourge itched, which didn’t help. Nor did the fact that the lightest touch of the big fancy brush she’d found in the bag hanging from a hook—Bannan’s kit—made his skin shiver madly, releasing choking clouds of stiff little brown hairs. She was coated in them already and she’d only just started. Jenn raised the brush, more than ready to toss it away.

A shadow crossed her feet. Bannan appeared in the stall door and smiled. “Need some help?”

“Oh, no. We’re fine.” To prove it, Jenn drew the brush as gently as she could along Scourge’s side.

“ARGH!!! TICKLES!” the breeze scolded unhappily. Skin shuddered until Scourge’s entire body shook, sending up another cloud. Hair twinkled in the beams of midmorning sunlight slanting through the barn, and drifted out the open stall window to the farmyard.

Jenn sneezed and spat, wiping at her mouth, then snuck a look at Bannan.

He wasn’t laughing. That was good. Although there was a suspicious twinkle in his eyes. Jenn narrowed hers. “What am I doing wrong?”

The breeze flipped hair into her face. “Everything.”

She frowned at Scourge. “I didn’t ask you.”

The truthseer stepped inside the stall. “You can hear him,” he declared with wonder, eyes wide.

“When he wants me to,” Jenn admitted. “He talks to you, too?” She had her answer in his involuntary glance at Scourge, who’d backed his hindquarters into the far corner of the wide stall to stand and huff as in terror of being touched with the brush again. “It’s rude,” she scolded the creature, “not to include everyone present in a conversation.” Though Master Dusom hadn’t breezes in mind when he’d chastised her and Roche for passing notes in his class, using his stern tone was most satisfying.

“ITCHY!” Forceful and aggrieved.

She and Bannan both winced, then he grinned. “Oh, yes. I hear Scourge. Here.”

“Here?” she repeated. “Couldn’t you where you came from?”

Scourge stamped one foot. “I couldn’t speak there,” admitted the breeze.

At the implication life outside Marrowdell might be lacking, Jenn tilted her head and frowned. “Why not?”

Bannan looked interested. “I’ve wondered the same.”

“I didn’t belong,” the breeze said testily. “Beyond the edge is only you and yours. I smothered.”

“‘Edge?’”

But the breeze became sullen, and Scourge flattened his ears.

“Let me have that.” Bannan took the offending brush, then rummaged in his kit for a toothed band of metal, secured to a wooden handle. “The scraper’s best once he’s this bad.” Scourge made a rude noise, but stepped up with an eager shake of his head. Bannan handed her the tool, showing her how to hold it, then laid his hand on the top of Scourge’s neck. “Start here, at the poll, and work down with his coat. Press as hard as you can. Trust me, his hide’s tough as ox’s.”

A smug, “Tougher.”

Jenn nodded. No wonder Scourge had complained. Though she hadn’t known better. Wainn’s pony had grown so tender-skinned with age they had to rub him down with soft rags or he’d protest, and she didn’t help with the village horses, having chores of her own in the mill.

Determined to do better, she rose on her toes and stretched, but with her arm fully extended, the scraper barely reached halfway.

“Tiny, aren’t you?” Bannan chuckled. Before she knew what he was about, he put his hands on her waist and hoisted her to the windowsill. “Try from here.”

For some reason, Jenn’s breath caught in her throat. Hoping he hadn’t noticed, she concentrated on finding her balance. Scourge gave her a doubtful look, but moved in reach. Copying Bannan, she put one hand flat against the beast’s warm neck and drew the scraper down with the other, pressing with all her strength. Wads of hair collected and fell. The hair that didn’t float up in her face. Jenn smiled, her lips firmly closed, and kept working.

After a few strokes, Scourge made a sound like a pot about to boil over. She stopped, alarmed, but Bannan merely gave him a pat. “He’s just happy. Aren’t you, idiot beast?”

“Itchy.” But the breeze in her ear was mild. “Better.”

Pleased, Jenn continued scraping. Bannan went to his kit and brought out a glove of woven rope, pulling that over his left hand. He applied the palm to Scourge’s flanks in sure short strokes, whistling almost soundlessly under his breath as he worked. He was careful where bone rose near the skin, his hands strong yet tender.

Having noticed this about Bannan’s hands, which was distracting and not what she should have noticed, Jenn began to feel warmer than she should.

“Where you’re from,” she said hurriedly. “Is it very different?”

“Vorkoun?” Bannan, thankfully, moved to the other side of Scourge. “She’s an old crone, wrapped in shabby walls and prone to damp. There’re ruins beneath her streets—none of which run straight, mind—and most families burn charcoal and oil, or haul dried manure from the countryside. There’s a stench for you on a lovely fall morning. Though the Lilem’s no sweeter, under her bridges.”

“No wonder you wanted to leave.” Jenn wrinkled her nose. “My aunt says Avyo is the most beautiful city in the world.”

He’d bent out of sight. “Avyo can afford it.” The words were bitter.

Maybe she hadn’t traveled, but Jenn wouldn’t have him think her unschooled. “Because Avyo’s the capital and heart of Rhoth.”

Bannan’s frowning face appeared above Scourge’s back. “Because our walls and blood protected her. Something those of Avyo, no offense to your lady aunt, chose to ignore when they bartered my city away!”

His anger wasn’t at her. It wasn’t childish, like one of Roche’s sulks, or pointless, like Old Jupp’s plan to embarrass other old people with stories about hats and parrots. This was a hard truth, an adult one, about the larger world and Jenn’s heart pounded with pride. Bannan spoke to her as an equal. As someone who would care about important things.

So she thought carefully before responding. “You kept the people of Vorkoun safe as long as you could, the way Uncle Horst protected me. Now I know about the curse and won’t take the road. Isn’t it their turn, to look after themselves?”

Bannan’s frown faded and he shook his head with a rueful chuckle. “You sound like my sister. Lila’d said, ‘soldiers don’t fix streets, peace does.’ I didn’t like hearing it. We argued up to the day I left.”

He’d left his sister?

Jenn looked away and scraped hair from Scourge, who’d waited with surprising patience. Scrape. Scrape. How could Bannan choose a settler’s bind if it meant leaving his family? What kind of person would do that?

“Jenn?” Bannan started around Scourge.

The only answer was someone who’d had to leave. Had Roche been right after all? Was Bannan some kind of criminal?

The scraper touched the line of cropped mane and Scourge plunged aside as if stung. Caught off balance, Jenn tumbled from the windowsill to land, sitting, on the stall floor. The hard stable floor.

“Are you all right?” Bannan stripped off the glove and tossed it aside to offer his hand.

“Yes.” Jenn scowled at Scourge. “What did I do?”

The great beast stepped forward, hooves a finger’s breadth from her bare toes, and lowered his head until his soft warm nose touched her ankle. “Itchy?”

“You could have warned her,” Bannan said testily. To her, “He’s touchy around his mane. I’m sorry. I should have told you.”

Jenn laid her palm along Scourge’s cheek and firmly pushed his big head out of her way. As she rose to her feet, the wads of loose hair she’d so proudly scraped clung to her skirt. “I need to change.” Bannan had yet to see her stay clean or tidy, she thought glumly. She brushed herself, managing to spread hair where it hadn’t been. “I should go.”

“Wait. Please.” He took the scraper, but didn’t move out of her way. “If it’s something he said—” with a frown at Scourge.

“No.”

The frown became a worried lift of his brows. “That I said?”

“I’d like to leave.” Which was impossible when he wasn’t moving. Jenn couldn’t go around him without moving Scourge, who wasn’t moving either. To ignore them both and climb out through the window, however tempting, would not only be childish but, from past experience, show more bare leg than she should, no matter how she tried.

“I truly meant no insult to your aunt,” Bannan ventured earnestly. “You do understand—”

“How can I?” she blurted. “How could you leave your sister? You say you care about Vorkoun and her people, but you left them too.” Once started, Jenn couldn’t stop. “You shaved your beard!” Which made no sense. “Roche thinks you’re a bandit!” she said fiercely. “So do I!”

His lips twitched. “No, you don’t. I can tell, you know.”

That wasn’t fair at all. Jenn bristled. “If you’re such a fine and wonderful man, Bannan Larmensu, why are you here?”

“Ah.”

A rather pleased “Ah.”

An “Ah” whose warmth made Jenn reconsider flight out the stall window.

Before she could, she found herself unable to move as Bannan cupped her cheek in one broad callused hand and captured her eyes with his.

“I see the truth, Jenn Nalynn,” he reminded her gently. “Therein lay my use to Vorkoun. I found the liars. Exposed the spies. Sent them to justice and none of them loved me for that service, though they knew not my real name.” He leaned close, his voice soft, its foreign lilt more pronounced. “The treaty will release them all and I cannot have them learn who I was. Not for Lila’s sake. Not for her sons. I would die before risking them.” She felt the heat of his body, though they didn’t touch, as his head bent to hers. “Do you understand me now?” A whisper.

Jenn nodded that yes, she understood. She tried to say she thought him noble and valiant to sacrifice for his family, but the words were lost in her throat as Bannan’s hand abandoned her cheek for her neck. His fingers slid into her hair, in a way that didn’t feel at all like having Peggs braid it, and he dropped the scraper with an urgent clatter that startled them both in order to involve his other hand and its fingers in the same task.

How peculiar.

Jenn could have sworn she’d felt every feeling there was to feel, from joy to boredom to fury. Just this morning she’d been afraid and angry, pitied Wyll, and been sorry for herself. Not to forget being excited and hopeful and crushed by disappointment. This—this feeling that she had no feet and stood somewhere that wasn’t here and time itself had paused?

This was new.

Bannan’s breath feathered across her lips, inviting a kiss, waiting. To accept, she need only close the tiny space between. A lift of her toes would do it. A tilt of her chin. She had only to want the kiss.

Which she did, didn’t she? Warmth raced along her bones. She wanted to kiss Bannan and be kissed the way she wanted her meadow and Peggs’ cooking, the way she craved candlelight and their father’s easy smile, and anticipated the look on Aunt Sybb’s face each spring when she stepped from her wagon and saw them waiting.

But not as much as she wanted the pebble.

Remembered, that hunger burned away all others, leaving cold, empty ash. “I need—” Jenn whispered desperately, her feet back on the cool earth of the stable floor, but nothing else right or real, “I need what isn’t here.”

Bannan’s fingers fell from her hair to her shoulders. He drew a ragged breath, then another, and Jenn searched his troubled face, wondering what truth he saw in hers.

“So it’s the dragon,” he said at last.

And she didn’t understand.