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“These darkings are made of Ozorne’s blood, and they were created to be his spies. Now they think for themselves, and they claim they will help us, not him. Is that correct?”
—It is.— That was the badger’s mind voice, the one he used in the mortal realms. —Now these darkings who spied on you will tell you where your enemy is.—
“The possibilities are dazzling,” murmured the queen.
Daine turned over, and realized that she was awake and thinking already: Reinforcements from the Copper Isles were approaching Port Legann.
Numair had brought them to a hollow under a rock shelf in the canyon wall. The river thundered nearby. Outside their shelter, heat rose from the flat, unshaded stone on either side of the river. It would be mad to start walking for several hours, unless they wanted to lose more time still to heat exhaustion. She also ached and stung from top to toe, as if she’d been pounded with a hammer and dragged through thorns. Which I have, she admitted to herself.
The mage leaned against the wall, dozing. Leaf and Jelly, seated on rocks by the fire, watched a small pot of soup. When she sat up, Jelly reached out a tentacle to grip the long-handled spoon and stirred. Creating a head, the darking squeaked, “Food done.”
Numair woke up. “Very good,” he told the blots. Glancing at Daine, he blushed and looked away.
“How in the name of Shakith did you find me?” the girl demanded.
The man fidgeted. “It was merely a simple magic, Daine—”
“Mouse manure,” she replied. “D’you think I’ve lived all this time with mages without knowing what it takes to find somebody and go to them?”
“I had a focus,” he mumbled.
“A focus? Something of mine to connect us?”
“Yes—and I’m glad I had it.”
“Yes—but—may I see it?” She wouldn’t like to find that anyone but Numair had a focus, something that had been hers for a long time, in his or her possession. There were all kinds of magics that could be done with focuses, including control of her body and mind.
For a moment he looked grave; she thought that he might refuse. Then he reached across the distance between them. A bracelet appeared on his left wrist: a gold chain with an oval locket. This was the first time that she had seen it.
The locket fell into her palm and opened. Inside one half was a miniature painting of her face, perfect in every detail, from blue-gray eyes to stubborn chin. Tucked behind a gold clip in the other half was a smoky brown curl. It seemed more like a lover’s token, not a magical device to find an errant student. She returned it to him.
“I thought you might laugh if I asked you to sit for a portrait.” He attached locket to chain—both vanished. “The painting was done by Volney Rain.” He was a court artist they knew. “The hair I got when you were delirious with unicorn fever six months ago.”
Going to the fire, he took charge of the soup, filling three bowls. One he gave to Daine; one he kept for himself. The third he placed on the ground. The darkings flowed over their bowl.
Daine blew on a spoonful to cool it. “What happened to you? What about those rock things?”
“They carried me off. I used my Gift to shield myself, but it took them some time to learn that I was the source of their pain. Once they did, they fled. When I returned to the Chaos vent, and realized that you had gone over the cliff—” He swallowed hard.
“You can thank a number of trees and a deep part of the river that I’m reasonably alive.” She sat next to him, inching over until he was forced to raise his arm. Flinching at the bite of her cuts and scratches—she’d have to tend them soon—she tucked herself into the curve of his arm, then rested her head on his chest.
“You’re trembling,” she murmured.
“I’m only tired.” He was lying, she knew. “I used my entire Gift to reach you.”
“You shouldn’t have,” she told him. “You need it to defend yourself—and we still have to reach the Sea of Sand.”
Numair’s arm tightened. She looked down so that he couldn’t see her wince. “If I’d lost you and kept my power, I would hate myself. Eventually magic returns, even after a draining. I had no way to know if you would.”
She looked into his face, and smiled. “It would take more than falling off a cliff to keep me from you.”
Numair kissed her again, his mouth lingering. The flooding heat of desire nearly swamped Daine before he broke the kiss. “I’d hoped you felt that way,” he whispered. He kissed her eyelids, and the tip of her nose, then found her lips again. When he stopped, Daine was limp within the circle of his arm; now she too was trembling.
He sighed regretfully. “I should look at your cuts.”
Daine sat up as he drew the pack over. Gingerly—even her bones ached—she lifted her shirt hem.
“Daine!”
“What?”
He had turned crimson under his tan. “You—we aren’t—you should be clothed!”
“I’ve a breast band on, dolt. Besides, this shirt’s in shreds. Like the rest of me.”
He shifted slightly. “It just doesn’t seem right. I feel that I’m . . . taking advantage of your innocence. A man of my—years, and reputation—”
“ ‘Taking advantage of’?” she repeated. “And what reputation?”
“You of all people should know that I’ve been involved with ladies of the court.”
“What has that to do with the price of peas in Persopolis?”
“It’s easy for an experienced man to delude a young woman into believing herself in love with him. It is the basest kind of trickery, even when the man does not intend it.”
“Do you love me or not?” she demanded.
“That is not the topic under discussion.” He fumbled, getting Sarra’s ointment from his pack. Jelly and Leaf trickled over, carrying a bottle of water between them. “Thank you,” Numair told them as he took charge of it.
Defiantly the girl stripped off her shirt, turning her back to him. Her breast band was in little better condition than her outer clothes, but she didn’t care. He was making the fuss, not her! “We’re not talking about love?” she demanded, wincing as he began to clean the cuts on her shoulders and back. “What are we talking of, then? Canoodling?”
“Daine! Is that what you think I want?” he demanded, outraged. “Sex?” Despite his dismay and fury, the hand that smoothed ointment on her was gentle.
“It isn’t?” Rising to her knees, she stripped off what remained of her breeches. She heard Numair move away.
Swinging to face him, she searched his eyes; when they met hers, she knew that she’d hurt him. But how? she thought, baffled. Why? Perin only wanted to bed her, as a few Snowsdale men had bedded her mother. Then she knew. Grabbing the hand with the bracelet, she held the locket. A lover’s token, she’d thought before. She had been right. “You’re in love with me?”
He looked away.
“Love’s fair wondrous. Where’s the harm?”
“I was ‘canoodling,’ as you so charmingly put it, when you were four. You’re so young, Da
ine. I knew that if I spoke, you might think yourself in love with me; you might ma—” He stopped.
“Marry?” she squeaked. “Marry you?”
He wouldn’t look at her. “One day you’d turn to me and see an old man. You’d want a young one.” He got up and walked out of their shelter. She watched him go to the river and crouch there, a big shadow against sun-bleached rock.
She rubbed her face. Love was well enough, but marriage? There was so much to consider. All her life she’d heard that no respectable man would marry Sarra’s bastard—though she wondered if the Snowsdale gossips would think Numair respectable.
All those things he’d said of her waking up someday could be turned to fit him. She had managed to get a look at all of the women whose names were linked with his. They were typically in their thirties or late twenties, buxom, well-groomed, beautiful, mature.
What if he woke up, later on, to see a baby where he wanted to see a woman?
If they married, they would be trapped. Daine had seen enough bad marriages to know a life sentence when she saw one. Some of those marriages had involved men whose marriage proposals her mother had turned down.
Unrolling one of Numair’s shirts, she wrapped it around herself—the scrapes on her back were healing fast, thanks to her mother’s ointment—and walked down to him.
“Can’t we just go on as we have?” she asked. “This is a fair weight to solve when things are so—mad.”
He looked up and smiled, just barely. “That is certainly true.”
“I know I love you. Maybe I always have—”
“Which is what I was afraid of.”
She ignored his frivolity. “Once we’re home—once the war’s done—we can work it out. We’ll talk then.”
Standing, he cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her gently. “Indeed we will.”
Her mother’s ointment made small work of her injuries. As Numair cut his spare clothes down to fit her, she took advantage of the powerful thermals in the canyon, letting them carry her in hawk shape above the rim. There she flew upstream until she found the path of destruction that she’d left in her tumble down the cliff.
