Changespell Legacy (32 page)

Dayna wasn't entirely sure he was truly focused on the conversation.

That left the man behind the shield, with his collarless casual exec shirt and exquisitely tailored trousers of tough, spelled material. Dayna narrowed her eyes, suddenly realizing that those trousers reminded her of nothing more than a stylish version of something a martial artist on this world would wear. Waist pleats along with the sharply pressed front leg creases, topping ankle boots of fine, soft leather that would make for the lightest of feet. "Who are you?" she said. "Your friend in the New Age store didn't have much of a chance to answer questions before she left."

Suliya eased through the gap in the hay, and Mark frowned at it. "Gotta fix that," he said, kicking the bottom hay bale into place and stepping over it to retrieve the rest. "Never mind me. I can hear." Dayna nodded, but no one else even seemed to notice. Not Jess with her inner struggle and Carey with his detachment or Suliya, who frowned thoughtfully as she moved closer to the prisoner, walking the border of the barrier to view him from all angles and then pressing her lips together to regard him with hands on hips.

"Like I said," Carey told Dayna. "He's not talking—other than to say his name is Wheeler. I think it's clear enough someone on the other side decided we're a threat, which means they believe Ramble knows something—"

Dayna scowled at no one in particular. "How would anyone even know the possibility existed?"

Absently, nibbling a fingernail as she stared at Wheeler, Suliya said, "Gossip. News. We knew he was the only survivor before we went to Second Siccawei, didn't we?"

"But no one even knew the Council was dead!"

She gave Dayna an impatient look. "Of course they did. We knew. Anyone at a Council wizard's hold knew. The Secondary Council knew. The landers found out next, you can be sure . . . and from there it probably went official. What juicier little bit to add along with it could you have? 'The only survivor was a horse'!"

Carey said, "That sounds like the voice of experience."

Suliya waved a negligent hand. "I know how secrets get out, if that's what you mean. Seen plenty of it."

Abruptly, she pointed directly at Wheeler. "You. You've done work for SpellForge through FreeCast."

Wheeler gave her the barest of smiles. He'd tucked the hand of his wounded arm into his belt, and seemed not much discomfitted by his tenuous situation. "I'm surprised you remember. Then again, I'm surprised to see you here. I can assure you the SpellForge board has no idea you're involved."

"I don't answer to them," Suliya said, annoyed. "I never did. That was Papa's problem, wasn't it?"

"I think he considered his problem to be the fact that you're a spoiled brat," Wheeler said. "It's open to individual interpretation, of course."

"Poot," she snarled at him, after just enough hesitation to reveal that his words had struck home. She turned her back on him and said in an offhand way, "There's a consortium of spell corps who like to push the limits; SpellForge is in it. They call themselves FreeCast. FreeCast maintains teams of what they like to call fieldworkers. Wizards, fistmen . . . they convince people not to make a loud fuss when something happens to go wrong. You'd be surprised what the Council doesn't know about." She jabbed a thumb at Wheeler over her shoulder. "He's done some bodyguard work for my family through FreeCast."

Dayna gave Wheeler a careful look, surprised to find him as casual as before—not angered by Suliya's words, and possibly even amused by her. Despite herself, Dayna was impressed. She, too, had been captured by what amounted to the enemy—or at the least, faced such opposition in desperate straits.

She
knew
how she reacted.

Not like this.

"Tsk," he said. "Your father
would
be disappointed."

Suliya cast the most dismissive of glances over her shoulder. "I'm doing exactly what he wanted—standing up for something other than myself. For something I believe in. It just doesn't happen to be what
he
believes in."

Carey gave her a strange look—partly wary, Dayna thought . . . and partly disbelief. "Suliya, just who
is
your father?"

She waved him off. "He's on the board. It doesn't matter." But her mouth twisted in an embarrassed expression, and she said, "I never thought I'd be ashamed of him. I've always been
proud
of where I came from . . ."

Jess said suddenly, "You don't know he is part of this."

Suliya glanced at Wheeler; her face had gone a little sad. "I think I do."

Wheeler quite studiously didn't respond. Instead he looked at Dayna and said, "Where the hells did you come from, anyway? My recon calls you a 'second-year student who lacks the discipline to stay away from raw magic'—and you took out Argre in this world without magic."

"She started it," Dayna said, stung by the discipline remark. She held out her hand, showed him the stones. "I stored up some magic and I used it on her." Yeah, maybe it hadn't been quite
that
simple. "And you don't know squat about magic, do you? Your people are afraid of raw magic because it's
harder
to use, not easier. I just didn't happen to grow up with people telling me it was impossible, so I do it."

"You stored—" He stared at the stones, shook his head. "I've never heard of anyone even considering such a thing."

She shrugged. "So I like to color outside the lines."

But Carey, all too practical, said, "It's a brilliant idea . . . but not one Camolen wizards have any reason to come up with. I'm not surprised they didn't anticipate it."

"I'll bet Argre was," Wheeler said. "But then, she always went for the offensive magic too quickly.

Foolish."

"Just like your pal who wanted to kill us instead of reason with us?" Carey said, absently rubbing his knuckles in a small circle against his chest. "And you wonder why we don't trust your word that we'd be safe if you took us back?"

For the first time, Wheeler lost his composure; his face darkened. "If I'd taken you back on my word, I would have seen to your safety."

"Excuse us if we don't care to test you on that," Dayna said. She glanced at Carey, a significant look that he didn't miss. "The question is, what do we do with you
now
?"

Jess didn't care what they did with Wheeler. "I want to go home," she said, using her low voice, glancing up from beneath a quietly lowered brow because she'd been staring at the ground and didn't bother to raise her head all the way. Interrupting, completely, Dayna's train of thought. Carey looked away; he'd known this was coming.

She'd warned him, after all.

She said, "We know what Ramble couldn't tell us. We know FreeCast has something to do with the static and the meltdowns. People in Camolen need to know . . . the message board isn't working right.

And I want to go home. Ramble wants to go home. He needs to be a horse again."

"But—" Mark turned from shoving the last hay bale back into place, turning to Jess in shock, looking from her to Carey.

"I want to go back," she said firmly.

"Jess, we don't even know if we
can
go back," Dayna said, as surprised as Mark. "And we need more time to pry information from this guy. Wheeler."

Jess looked at Wheeler; he returned her regard with the perfectly pleasant expression of someone unintimidated in spite of his situation. And she looked at Carey again, who'd turned back to her with a subtle plea in his face.

It tore her, made a clenched spot at the bottom of her throat that wanted to cry out loud. But she knew . . .

If she didn't do this for Ramble now, if she didn't do it for herself, respect her own feelings enough to act on them . . .

Either way, something ineffable would change. Something ineffable already
had
.

"You stay here then," she said. "I will not. I promised Ramble."

Tentatively, Mark said, "We could send something ahead, make sure the landing spot was safe. It'd be a different spot than the, um . . . than that guy used, wouldn't it?"

Wheeler sounded like a man who didn't want to remind anyone he was there. "The spell came from your wizard's records . . . but our people tweaked it for return location. You've got a chance."

"Hay," Jess said with finality. "Send hay. Then send us. We can have a good meal before we journey back to Anfeald." The original travel spell had dumped them a good day's journey from Anfeald the first and only time they'd used it.

"A whole travel spell for hay," Dayna said—but she was just being Dayna, and not truly objecting at all.

From her resigned expression, she'd already thought of sending something ahead . . . and simply hadn't mentioned it, holding back with the hope that Jess herself wouldn't come up with it, and therefore wouldn't go.

Glancing between Carey and Jess, Mark said, "Jay
does
need to know what we've learned. All of Camolen needs to know it. Maybe you can turbocharge the spell with stored magic, like you did at Starland."

"I still can't guarantee it'll get through," Dayna told him, her expression speaking as loud as her words.

Whose side are you on?
"But you think it will," Jess said. She knew Dayna that well. "Will you do it? Ramble and I can use his spellstone to send the hay first, and mine to get there, but . . ."

"But having a little turbocharge would be nice," Mark finished for her, having failed to shrink before Dayna's irritation as usual, his implacable expression making it quite clear he wasn't interested in taking sides one way or the other.

Dayna nodded at Wheeler, a jerk of her head. Angry. "And what about
him
? I can't do everything at once."

Wheeler leaned against the big aluminum door with his barrier. "You don't really need to worry about me. We
know
where my travel spell leads." He cast a regretful look at what was left of his former partner, then settled his frown on Suliya, long enough that she shifted uncomfortably. "Your father . . ." he said—stopped, shook his head, and started again—"I have the idea that SpellForge and FreeCast went dogleg on me with this one—told me to bring you all back and told the other two agents to . . ." he hesitated " . . . clean up."

Stricken, Suliya would look at no one. But Carey said, "Why would they?"

Wheeler shrugged. He'd been trapped long enough, still long enough, that Jess found he was not so bland as he'd first looked. That like Jaime, his nose showed signs of having once been broken, if not badly. That he had a scar through one eyebrow, and one on his chin—faint ones. Character marks. He said, "Because that's how I work, and they wouldn't have gotten me on the job otherwise."

"And they wanted you because you're the best," Carey said flatly.

Wheeler gave a faint grin. "If there wasn't something weakening the magic, you'd have good reason to know it." He shrugged. "My mistake. But it doesn't matter. If they broke faith . . . you've nothing to worry about from me. You tell me more about what's going on, you might even find me on your side . . . because I have to wonder how much
else
they didn't tell me."

Dayna snorted, planting her hands on boyish hips. "Very convenient for you. So we just let you go, even after what you've done here. What you
tried
to do."

"I'm not sure you have much choice," he said. "You don't seem like the sort to kill in cold blood. None of you. And I guarantee you that conventional means won't hold me."

Carey scrubbed a hand through the short hair at the back of his neck, suddenly looking tired of the whole thing. "He's got a point, Dayna."

She gave him a furious glare. "You didn't learn enough from Ernie? You let
him
go . . . and boy, didn't
that
come back to haunt us!"

Jess understood Dayna's fear. She understood what it was like to watch the world making decisions around her, and in spite of her. But she said, "This man is not Ernie."

"Guides, just use a burnin' spellstone on him," Suliya said, her voice thin and a little thready.
Your father
, Wheeler had started to say to her. Not
the SpellForge board
or
FreeCast
—and if Jess understood that, so did Suliya. Whatever was happening, her father had a direct role. "It'll tell you where he stands, won't it? Or use a liar spell. Just quit biting at each other about it!" And she whirled to stomp off—and couldn't.

Not with the aisle once more blocked by a wall of hay, and Wheeler himself behind a barrier against the double doors. With a faint noise of despair, she turned against the hay bales and hid her face, removing herself from the space in the only way she could.

Jess felt a tug of compassion, an impulse to go rub the young woman's back and tell her
easy
. . . but she stayed where she was. If she was going to feel for someone right now, it had to be Ramble.

And herself.

"That's a good idea," Mark said, giving Dayna a hopeful look. "You can do that, can't you?"

"Of course I can—but these storage stones aren't endless." Unexpectedly, she tossed him the one she'd just used, muttering in the most sardonic of tones, "Eat all you want. We'll make more." And almost immediately waved off Wheeler's frown, Carey's raised eyebrow, Jess's tilt of head. "Forget it. Old television commercial. Yes, I can do that. Yes, it's a good idea."

"Good," Jess said. "Then you can go back to thinking about sending Ramble back. With me."

"I think you should wait," Dayna said bluntly, although she hesitated as someone drove up to the barn—car door closing, tack room door opening and closing, a few moments of casual bumping around in the tack room itself, and then someone came into the aisle, evidently thinking herself alone to judge by her pointed comment about the odor she encountered.

"That's Caitlin," Mark said. "Her horse is at the other end of the aisle. Keep it down and we'll be fine."

"If you wait," Dayna persisted, barely seeming to notice the interruption, "I can be more certain of the magic, and take us all back at once. And we might have more information to give to Jaime."