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“You already have. I don’t mind, but Hellack might. It was meant for him.”
“I’m sure he won’t mind sharing with Kialla, then. He’s terribly smitten.”
“That he is,” Numair answered, with just enough suggestion to set Dahlia to scowling again.
Clare shot him a you’re-going-to-make-her-insufferable look and took the apple down to the corrals, entering Kialla’s enclosure on the side closest to her target. The woman did not fully turn as Clare approached, but the stiffening of her posture made it clear she knew who had arrived. Something about her nagged at Clare, as if the woman were a puzzle piece designed to fit with something else in the world, but she couldn’t for the life of her fathom what. It was one of those slivers of certainty she was now accustomed to receiving from the Song, ones destined to never have an answer.
Although, now that she’d renegotiated her position with it, she wondered if it would solve the mystery for her, if she asked.
She slid a knife from her boot and neatly divided the apple into thirds. One-third went to Kialla and another to Hellack. Then, as if just noticing the other woman, she turned and held out the remaining apple over the fence, prominently displaying her ribbon-wrapped wrist.
“Would you like it?”
The woman held her gaze, the tight bronze curls of her hair moving gently in the wind. “No.”
Clare marveled at how well she managed to make the single syllable sound like, “Go throw yourself in Ferrian’s flames.” She thought Clare was taunting her. Clare opened her mouth to set things straight, but the Song flared up with such insistence it strangled the words in her throat.
We are not the only ones who listen.
Clare considered ignoring it, but she had never been stupid simply for spite.
What do you mean?
Listen.
So she listened with the Song’s ears and heard an eerie, high-pitched keening that led Clare’s gaze to the bulge of an armband beneath the shirt on the woman’s right bicep, and behind that hidden ornament she felt the prying attentions of Alys's brother.
Subtlety, then. “Are you quite certain? I think she would like it, if you take it.” Clare slipped between the fence rails and stepped forward so that her hand, apple and ribbon included, were shielded from any watching eyes by the woman’s own body. She pulled her hand up, transferring the apple to her palm at nearly the same time she loosed the ribbon and deftly transferred it to the woman’s tunic pocket.
The woman’s mare reached out and delicately lipped the apple from her hand. Clare stepped back and stroked the horse’s neck.
“She is quite lovely, but not my type, I’m afraid.” Clare put just enough pressure against the mare’s shoulder to get her to sidle a step away from her and towards the woman, without appearing to have done anything more than pet the horse. “Ah, and you see I am not her type either. She is very obviously taken with you.”
Slowly, bit by bit, the woman’s shoulders relaxed. “She and I have been together a long time,” she said carefully. “She ran away once, when she was injured.”
“And no doubt she made her way back to you as quickly as she could.”
Footsteps approached, intentionally noisome.
“Are we to feed every horse in the valley?” Numair asked loudly. Clare turned, seeing he approached only a few paces ahead of Lord Megadari.
“Not unless you have bought a bushel of apples instead of the one,” Clare answered lightly.
Lord Megadari wasted no time in gathering his horse and swinging into the saddle. The woman followed without a single glance passing between them, and as they rode off she was wise enough not to cast a backward glance at Clare.
“You seem to be missing your pretty ribbon,” Numair said.
“Do I? Missing it implies I don’t know where it has gone.”
“I knew someone who had one just like it, once.”
Clare decided, then, that it was not her fault if Alys had underestimated the attention to detail that others might be capable of.
“Indeed, you probably did.”
Numair checked Hellack’s cinch as the rest of their party approached. “Is she all right?”
“Yes.” Clare led Kialla to the corral fence and climbed a couple rails to slide smoothly onto her back. “And that is all I will be saying on the matter.”
