Longeye (14 page)

"It will not burn," she said, "but I fear that it will
hurt
, Miss. What did you do to mark yourself so?"

Becca looked down at her gore-stained fingers, took a breath, and plunged both into the steaming water.

It
did
hurt. She bit her lip and kept her hands submerged, watching the bits of leaf and other rubbish float to the surface, feeling the water dissolve the dried blood and open half-sealed cuts.

"I'm afraid that I . . . beat . . . a creature made out of dry twigs and thorns," she said, and raised her head to meet Violet Moore's eyes. "It had set a monster against us, knocked me off my horse, and struck Nancy down when she tried to protect me. I—" Suddenly, she could not meet those eyes. She looked down again, at the rusty water, trash swirling on its surface. "I wanted to kill it."

"And rightly so," Sam said from across the room. "When we came on the scene, it looked like they were doing their best to kill you. That . . . 
creature
, whatever it was, wasn't just playing with your horse, Miss Beauvelley, and as you say, the Hob didn't mind hurting your Nancy, there."

"That's right," Violet said, suddenly brisk. "If Sam says that you did right, Miss, then you can depend on it that you did."

"Now, there's good advice!" Sam said, with a glib earnestness that put Becca suddenly and painfully in mind of her own brother. "I'm glad to hear that you've come 'round to my point of view, Violet!"

His niece ignored him, and brought out a cloth. "Here, Miss. Let's dry you off and see what we have to deal with."

"Nancy—" Becca began, looking over at the still form on the table. Had her glow dimmed? "Her state is very bad, I fear."

"It may be," Violet said briskly. "And if that is the case, she will certainly need your skill more than mine. Give me your right hand."

There was some sense in what the girl said, especially if she was herself not an experienced healer. Becca lifted her right hand out of the murky water, shook it carefully, and allowed Violet Moore to enfold it in the cloth. Her touch was gentle, but Becca found it necessary to bite her lip so as not to cry out.

"Now the left," the girl said, holding out the pink-stained cloth.

Becca raised her left hand slowly, blinking at the damage there. How had she found the strength to strike the creature hard enough to produce such damage to her crippled hand? She looked up into Violet Moore's frown.

"Have you hurt your arm?" the girl asked, wrapping the towel gently around Becca's left hand.

"A long time ago," she answered. "My hand is very weak and I do not have a full range of motion. I wonder that I was able to strike at all, much less so strongly."

"Anger sometimes lends strength," Sam said from his seat near the doorway, and gasped, boots scraping on the floor as he leapt to his feet. Becca and Violet turned, Becca pulling her hand free of the towel and allowing it to fall to her side, as Sian walked in, attended by a sturdy woman outlined in copper fires, an old man leaning on a stick, and a slender man in hunting leathers. Others crowded behind those four, but Sian raised her hand and they stopped short of entering the workroom.

"Miss Beauvelley." The Engenium's voice was brittle, her movements so sharp she seemed to cut the air as she walked forward. "You summoned me, I believe?"

The room was too small, and overfull with power. Meri hung back, his hand pressed hard against the dead wooden walls, the open door at his back not as much comfort as he had hoped, blocked as it was with craning Newmen.

Rebecca Beauvelley's hands had been cleaned; in the absence of old blood, the lacerations seeped new. He wondered that the healing had not yet taken place, unless the damaged Nancy had taken precedence?

But no—a glance at the table between Sian and the two Newomen showed a small silver-limned form curled among a handful of forest-floor trash. It showed no aura, and it did not breathe, yet there was no sense of death about it.

An artifact, Ranger
, the elitch told him.

An
artifact
, Meri thought, and leaned harder against the wall. And it was Altimere the artificer who had sold a horse to a Newman across the
keleigh
, which had been the grandsire of the mare who permitted Rebecca Beauvelley to ride her.

Whence came this Newoman
? he asked the trees, but if they answered, it was lost in the blare of Sian's anger.

"Well, Miss Beauvelley? Did you dare to summon the Engenium of Sea Hold?"

Rebecca Beauvelley's chin went up, her aura reflecting Sian's anger.

"If it comes to that," she said icily, "I am the daughter of an Earl. While I don't suppose I outrank you, certainly neither of us is the servant of the other. What I asked was that you speak to me here, so that both of our necessities could be met."

That was well-said, Meri thought, and it might even have answered, had she had the wit to moderate her aura, and modulate her voice. Temper would only draw temper, as
kest
drew
kest
, and no good could come of either.

"Your
necessities
," Sian said, her voice edged and her aura stitched with red, "included leaving the path and losing yourself in the woods, making a mockery of my protection—"

"Does it occur to you that I might have had quite enough
protection
from the Fey?" Rebecca Beauvelley interrupted hotly. "It seemed best to throw my lot in with the trees, who are at least kind to me."

Sian rocked back on her heels, her hands tucked in her belt. Elizabeth Moore slipped by her and went to stand at the foot of the table, while Jack Wood planted his stick on the dead wood floor midway between Sian and the door.

"Placing yourself in the care of trees seems to have worked well for you," she observed.

Rich color mantled the Newoman's brown cheeks, but she took a hard breath and answered, with a credible attempt at calmness, "It did not, as it happened, but it was scarcely the fault of the trees that we were purposefully led astray and then fallen on by bandits."

She looked down, as if suddenly recalling herself, turned slightly, and held her hand out to Violet Moore.

"If you please," she said, "the rag."

The girl handed the pink-smudged cloth over, and Rebecca Beauvelley blotted her hands with it absently, as she stepped to the table.

"The trees," she said, looking up into Sian's face, "suggested that you might know how to . . . heal . . . Nancy."

"
Heal
it?" Sian repeated, disbelieving. "It's an artifact, as you well know, and has no precedence over my business with you!"

"I disagree," the Newoman said flatly, and used the cloth to gently clean the tumbled bits of forest debris away from the small silver body. "Nancy broke her tie to Altimere in order to serve me, and she fell protecting me. Whatever else she may be, she is my
friend
, and I have too few in this place to allow her to fail!"

There was a rustle and a shift in the crowd blocking the doorway. Meri turned his head as Jamie Moore wriggled into the room. The sprout sent a quick glance toward his mother, stern and alert at the foot of the table, and slipped over to stand next to Meri.

"That—thing—" Sian said, and Meri heard the rumble of surf beneath her words, "is a danger to you, to me, and to the Queen. I spared it once, out of courtesy to yourself. I can no longer allow it to exist."

Kest
flared, turquoise and aqua, arcing from Sian's fingers to the tiny figure on the table.

"No!" Golden power washed the room, straining against the wooden walls.

Meri cried out, his
kest
leaping to answer the outflow of power. Beside him, the sprout shouted, his aura afire as he moved blindly toward the glory.

"Jamie!" Meri lunged, one knee banging painfully against the floor as he caught the boy and held him, pressing the small face into his shoulder, feeling the thin body tremble with the buffeting of forces too strong for him.

Cringing, his
kest
yearning, Meri stared up at the confrontation. The Newoman's
kest
was considerable, but she was obviously untrained in its use. Sian, on the other hand, had had a great deal of training, her
kest
was considerable,
and
she stood upon her own land, among folk who had accepted her protection. Even as he watched, the flow of Sian's
kest
shifted, and began to twine itself around Rebecca Beauvelley's
kest
. Meri swallowed, suddenly ill. If she succeeded—and he thought she could—she would tie the Newoman to her,
kest
-to-
kest
, overriding the other's will.

Sian must not subsume the Gardener
, the elitch thundered into his head.
You must stop this, Ranger!

He
must stop it? Meri thought dizzily, his meager
kest
burning in his veins. And yet, he thought, feeling the boy's body shivering against him—who else was there?

Meri lurched to his feet, and thrust Jamie into the arms of a woman hovering at the door.

"Hold him!" he snapped, and turned, reaching Sian's side in two long strides.

"Sian! Have done!"

She ignored him. Indeed, she might not have heard him.

"Sian!" He dared to put his hand on her shoulder, felt the thrill of her
kest
along his nerves.

Rebecca Beauvelley was going to lose this contest; she had no control, nothing but untamed power. Worse, her already fragmented focus was disintegrating, as fear crept in to replace anger.

She was right to be afraid, Meri thought, and too unschooled even to disengage. If she simply dropped her defense, Sian would bind her before she could stop herself.

If, inside this state of exalted anger, she wished to stop herself.

The Newoman needed a distraction, something to draw her attention and her
kest
, something that Sian would recognize, even in her anger, as untouchable.

Scarcely had he formed the thought, than his fingers were in his pouch. The sunshield, that the sea had given him so many days ago. A chancy gift, as the sea's gifts often were—and something against which Sian, the Engenium of Sea Hold, would
never
contend.

He felt the intelligence within the sunshield take note, felt sea-
kest
wash through his blood.

"Subdue the Newoman," he murmured, and tossed the sunshield directly at her.

As he had hoped, she jerked back, her
kest
flaring wildly, even as her right hand rose. The sunshield flashed in the instant before her fingers closed around it. Sian's
kest
fell so quickly Meri winced in sympathy for the headache she had doubtless just given herself.

On the far side of the table, Rebecca Beauvelley swayed slightly. Meri breathed deeply, as if to prompt her, and was faintly gratified to see her inhale, as well, her
kest
visibly falling. Two more breaths and she was nothing more than a bedraggled and exhausted Newoman bathed in a dangerously brilliant aura. She shook her head, and raised her hand to look at the sunshield.

His heart jolted, and Rebecca Beauvelley lifted a face as pale as linden leaves, eyes wide and hopeless as she stared into his face. She shook her head, though what she denied he could not say, and her lips parted.

Softly
, he thought, anxiously—and to the trees.
Tell her to speak Sian sweet, and apologize for contending with her.

The Newoman blinked, her face going vague. She nodded, and cleared her throat.

"Sian, please forgive me," she said, her voice trembling slightly, which was not, Meri thought, a bad thing. "I should not have challenged you. But, truly, Nancy is not a danger, and—and I wish you would help me to mend her. The trees said—that you might."

He felt Sian stiffen beside him, and for a heartbeat feared that she would come the haughty High Fey. The moment passed, however; Sian's stance softened, and she inclined her head.

"All you need do is renew its
kest
," she said. "Artifacts do not continue forever without a renewal of power, and this one has undertaken some . . . significant exertions of late."

Meri had not thought it possible for Rebecca Beauvelley's face to pale further. Watching her, he felt ill himself, and shivered as if with a sudden chill.

"Renew her
kest
," she whispered, staring down at the tiny figure. It seemed to Meri that it was significantly less bright than it had been, and he wondered if it would cease to be altogether, once the glow went out.

Slowly, the Newoman approached the table, and slowly bent over the small object there. Meri fancied he tasted silver and grit as Rebecca Beauvelley kissed the thing tenderly on its cold lips.

No one in the room or outside of it spoke. No one moved.

On the table, the artifact named Nancy began to glow, bright, brighter, brightest. Her wings flushed red and green, and suddenly she was up, flashing a long silver loop around the room, and turning handsprings on the air.

As suddenly as she had risen, she dropped back to the table, and knelt. Taking Rebecca Beauvelley's bruised and bloodied hand in both of hers, she kissed her fingers.

Rebecca Beauvelley sighed. Meri swallowed around the lump of emotion in his throat.

Sian nodded, and crossed her arms over her breast. "There," she said briskly, "what had I said?"

She was burning; she was melted; she was liquid gold, formless and flowing. Even as she flowed, she felt something contain her; glimpsed a rope of living turquoise coolly dividing her heat. More heat built, enough to burn the world, and yet the fluid rope remained untouched. It divided, forcing her to flow into smaller and smaller pockets, ineffectual . . .

 . . . and frightened.

Becca tried to step back from the flowing heat; tried to shake away the confining strands, but she was confounded by the blare and sizzle of power.

Something arced into her vision, as cool and calming as snow. She reached out and caught it, heard a roar, a crash, and tasted salt on her lips.

She felt her body, her hand, fingers closed about something damp and cool, but the fire, she was on fire—no, she
was
the fire! She breathed in, as if she would cool herself, astonished when the heat did subside, a little.