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Alanna shut up.
Her curiosity didn’t desert her for long. “How long have you been doing this?” she asked when they’d been riding for several hours.
Liam had to think a moment. “Thirty years, give or take a month.”
“Thirty years!”
He nodded. “I was four when the Shang Bear came to our village and looked us young ones over. Of us all, he said I ’might do.’ I wouldn’t let my dadda alone until he sent me. Lucky I wasn’t the oldest, or I’d be a farmer now.” He looked at her and smiled. “Then I wouldn’t have met you.”
Alanna looked away. When he turned all of his charm on her, she could feel her insides melt.
Think about what you’re getting into, Faithful advised.
Alanna glared at him. “I’m not ’getting into’ anything, and I’ll thank you to keep your opinions to yourself!” she snapped. Seeing Liam’s stare, she turned red.
“Is that a cute habit of yours, or did he really speak?” His face had an odd, tight look; his eyes were pale crystal in color.
“He talks. Sometimes other people understand him. Most of the time they don’t. Faithful is the one who decides.”
“Magic.” Liam frowned. “That’s right—you have it.”
“You have something against people with the Gift?” She suddenly felt defensive.
Their eyes met and held, until he grinned and pinched her nose. Crystal was replaced by blue-green. “Since it’s you, kitten, I’ll make an exception.”
Alanna decided it was time Moonlight had a gallop. Kicking the mare lightly, they leaped ahead, leaving the Dragon behind—for a little while.
There’s so much we don’t know about each other, she reflected as she watched Liam cook their night’s meal. I know he’s the Dragon, which means he’s brave and adventurous and probably has a temper—dragons are supposed to be fierce and protective. It means he’s a hero if ever there are real heroes.
She sighed. Will he come to the Roof with us? I’d feel a lot easier if I knew I had a Dragon at my back up there.
“Do you plan to marry?” Liam asked suddenly.
“What?” she cried, startled.
“You heard me. Your plans for the future—do they include a husband? Children?”
She fingered her emberstone. “Give up my shield after working so hard? Spend my time at court or on my husband’s lands? I have no patience for that kind of life. Besides—I don’t know anything about children younger than ten.”
“Have you ever tried to learn?”
“When did I have a chance?” she wanted to know. “Child care is one of the few duties a squire isn’t expected to perform, Ironarm! The Bazhir never asked me to, unless a child was sick. Then I was a healer, not a nanny.” Why was he asking such uncomfortable questions?
“I just wondered why you feel you have to be all warrior or all woman. Can’t you be both?”
Coram came back from washing, sparing Alanna the need to answer Liam’s question. It was just as well—she had no answer.
How did Liam unsettle her in so many different ways? Neither Jonathan nor George had laid siege to her as he did. I wish he’d stop putting me off balance, but he doesn’t seem to want to do that, either. Liam glanced up; their eyes met and held.
Coram broke the silence, kicking the Dragon gently. “Kindly wait t’romance her ’til I’m not here,” he advised. “I’ve a father’s interest in my lady still. And go easy on her. She’s not used to the game ye’re playin’.”
Liam grinned; Alanna blushed. “I can speak for myself,” she protested.
If you wanted to, Faithful put in. Coram guffawed, and Alanna decided to go for a walk rather than stay to be teased.
When she returned, Coram looked up hopefully. She’d been too tired the preceding night to show him Rispah in the fire. Now she crouched and held her palms out to the flames, reaching for her Gift. Her fingers glowed with purple fire: she sent it into the flames, until they matched the color of her Gift. Rispah’s image took shape, and Coram drew close, his eyes riveted on her.
She walked away, leaving Coram in private. Where was Liam? Why had he left—because he didn’t want to intrude? Or did it have something to do with her Gift? He’d sounded very odd when he mentioned it that morning.
She checked the horses and the spring, with no luck. At last she found him in a clearing near the stream, lying under a willow.
“You use your magic a lot,” he said flatly as she drew near.
“I’ve had it all my life. I’m used to it by now.” She sat beside him, puzzled by the odd tone of his voice. “You must have seen plenty of sorcery, roaming the way you do.”
His smoky voice was quiet. “No one is Gifted in Shang.”
Reaching to pluck a stalk of wildgrass, she stopped. She couldn’t have heard correctly. “You keep us out on purpose? Why?”
He wouldn’t look at her. “The Gifted use magic for a crutch. They won’t surrender to Shang study, because they know the Gift can always win them an escape.”
“We cheat, you mean.” She bit back other angry words.
“You’d be helpless, if your Gift was taken,” he challenged.
“Of course not!”
“How do you know?”
That silenced her. She didn’t know. All her life she’d had magic, even when she’d tried to ignore it. “I can’t help being Gifted,” she replied at last. “I tried to fight it, when I was a page. Then the Sweating Sickness came and a lot of people died. Prince Jonathan would have died, too, if I hadn’t used my Gift.”
“I just told you what we’re taught.”
She wished she could see his face. “Tell me—where would your great Shang masters be without healers and their magic? Where would you be?” He didn’t answer, so she went on. “My Gift brings Coram pleasure—how else could he see Rispah?”
“Maybe the lady doesn’t want to be spied on.” There was a dangerous rumble in his voice.
“Nonsense! She agreed to it. Would you like to see the letter?” Alanna demanded sharply, her temper rising. “My tribe would’ve fallen to hillmen, without my Gift and the Gifts of my students. I use my magic to heal, to pay back for some of the lives I take. What do you do to repay?”
“Whatever it is I do, Lady Pry, I do it with my own two hands!” She started to get up, and Liam held her back. “Alanna, wait! I didn’t mean—I have a temper.”
“So do I,” she snapped. She let him pull her down beside him again.
“Shang allows healers to work on us, it’s true. The students are Giftless. Not so much because the masters think people use it for a crutch as because they know training a Gift takes the student’s attention away from other things. When you follow Shang, you follow only Shang—if you’re to succeed.” He stroked Alanna’s hair. “Don’t scowl so, kitten. You’ve got me shaking in my boots.”
“I can’t change what I am,” she told him, cooling off. “I never asked to be half witch and half warrior.”
“I know.” The Dragon sighed. “Listen. I got heated up because I’m—because I’m afraid of magic.”
Was he teasing? She was in no mood for it! “You aren’t afraid of anything.”
“Everyone’s afraid of something.” He had a point, and she knew it. “I fear dying for nothing. I fear being sick—my grandda took a wound and rotted to death.” She patted his arm in sympathy but didn’t interrupt. “I hate being helpless. Then what’s the good of being a Dragon?”
“Or a Lioness,” she whispered.
He nodded. “But I’m also afraid of the Gift—I don’t even let healers use magic on me. Some folk are afraid of spiders—with me, it’s that.”
Alanna shuddered; she hated spiders with a passion! “I never heard of someone fearing magic, not like that. Disliking it, yes.”
“Well, I’m afraid of it.”
She fingered the stone at her throat. “Liam?”
“What?”
“How...” She felt herself blush and was grateful for the dark. “How can we be—
well, anything—if you fear my Gift?”
He put his arms around her, gathering her close. “I want to try anyway. What about you?”
“I don’t know you very well at all,” she whispered, half complaining. “You don’t know me.”
He was smiling. “That’s the fun of it, kitten.” He kissed her gently, then passionately, and Alanna surrendered. Any misgivings she had were put away for thought at another, less interesting, time.
Liam was shaking her gently. From the other side of their banked campfire she heard Coram’s snore. “Let’s go,” the Dragon whispered.
“Go where?” she yawned.
“You won’t learn Shang fighting in bed.”
She started to protest, and thought the better of it. Even at this hour she wanted his good opinion. Never mind that her arms felt as if they weighed triple what they usually did. He’d probably felt worse and still had gone about his morning routine. This was my idea, she prodded herself. Stifling a moan—Coram at least would have his sleep!—she obeyed.
Fortress Jirokan was a well-fortified town, with a tent city outside its walls. Coram pointed at the river where a barge filled with people made its way downstream. “They’re fleein’ the Saren War,” he explained to Alanna as they rode toward the town gates. “Like as not their farms were burned or looted. Now they hope Maren’ll grant a place for them to start again.
“The boats take them south. The King’s too smart to keep all these rootless folk in one spot.” The Dragon nodded in the direction of the tent city. Now that she was closer, Alanna saw furniture piled in the mud and a wide variety of animals: cows, dogs, goats, horses, pigs, and chickens. People dressed in tattered, dirty clothes stared at the travelers on the road. “These camps are trouble. They breed thieves and killers. South Maren has room to feed them and land for new farms.”
