Changespell Legacy (19 page)

By the factor of an entire world, more or less.

"I'll meet them in the null room," she said, after an indecisive moment during which her brain fought the request to climb out of its foggy grief and think. "Have whatever refreshments you think are appropriate sent up as soon as possible. And I should change, don't you think?"

Cesna eyed Jaime's breeches and hay-flecked barn sweater and gave an unusually decisive shake of her head. "I don't know why they're here," she said, "but I think it's good to remind them that you're pitching in with the rest of us. That you care enough about what happens to Anfeald to do it."

Jaime blinked, taken by surprise . . . wondering briefly why anyone would expect else of her—she had, after all, already been involved in several adventures nearly the equivalent of dark ops on her own world, and gone far out of her way to testify at several hearings against Camolen criminals. And then, just as briefly, she wondered why it would be so important, here and now and with so much at stake around them.

Cesna gave her what—just as surprisingly—could have been called a pitying look. Then she ducked her head to stare steadfastedly at the floor and said, "The precincts are assigned to Council wizards, Jaime.

When new Council members are named, they have the option of using the existing hold."

It hadn't occurred to her. Arlen hadn't done so, after all; he'd chosen to build this place from scratch.

Now she found her mouth suddenly dry, her mind reeling from another blow. Now she understood Cesna all too well. She needed to show she had a place in this world, because she might well end up depending on the kindness of strangers.

Not a thought that had been anywhere near her mind when she'd made the decision to stay here.

"Son of a bitch," she said quietly, vehemently, and deeply felt. And then she brushed her hands over her hair in a habitual gesture to rid it of what hay she could, and stretched out the slump that had crept into her normally straight back. "I'm going down to the null room," she said. "Send them on up, and as I said, the refreshment. And I think it would be good to remind them—whoever they are, whatever they want—that along with pitching in, I'm also a guest here. A special guest of Arlen's, whom this hold is according the status to make decisions. Make sure I get one of the magically colored fancy glasses, will you? And have it already filled with ice water. And . . . you know how to listen in, don't you? Would you do that?"

Cesna allowed herself a small smile. "Gladly."

Jaime found herself with lips pressed together, face tense, shoulders bunching; she forced herself to relax. God, what had she gotten herself into? Not an intensely religious person, she still found herself sending out an honest prayer, here on this world where they didn't even know the word "God," but depended on afterworld guides she likened to angels.

On second thought, she sent an equally heartfelt prayer—
just let me get through all this
—to those guides. All the help she could get . . .

And then she headed for the null room.

She settled herself at the long table in this room without windows, noting the brightness of its new lighting with absent thought. Mural-like stenciling decorated the wall and ceiling juncture, a new design since the last time she'd been here, and a more colorful one. But the chairs—padded table chairs—were the same, as was the flower-filled planter lining one end of the room. Pencil and paper lay on the table by the head chair . . . the one she took. Without warning, a pitcher, glasses, and Jaime's requested ice water appeared on the tray in the middle of the table; one of the spellcook's fancy magics.

As Jaime took her glass—etched in delicate iridescent colors only magic could provide—a man and a woman reached the doorway, hesitating there.

"Come in, landers," Jaime said, using the term she'd learned was the polite gender-neutral equivalent of
gentlemen
in Ohio—even when the people being addressed weren't landowners at all. They glanced at the room, hesitating; she said, "It's a null room. I couldn't imagine you'd have any objections."

"No, of course not," said the woman, stepping inside and making room for the man to follow. Both wore the longsuits that passed for business wear in Camolen, though in this case wrinkled by travel. Personal coach, Jaime thought; they hadn't ridden, not in those fine-sheened trousers and long-tailed coats buttoned from the breastbone on up to a high, collarless neck. No ties here—but they did wear decorative triangles of silk hanging on fine chains at their throats.

"Feel free to sit," Jaime said, gesturing at the five remaining chairs, "and please excuse my appearance. I wasn't expecting visitors, and as you know . . . things are a little chaotic right now."

"Please," said the man. "We're the ones who should be apologizing. Unfortunately, it's hard to send ahead an intent to visit these days."

"Unfortunately," Jaime said wryly as they flipped their coat tails out behind them and sat in what might have been an orchestrated movement. Used to working together. Both man and woman were of medium build and medium height and neutral coloring; her light brown hair showed highlights not found in his, but was cut in a similar style; he had faint freckles nearly lost in the tan of his skin tone and she did not.

Utterly unremarkable.

And at the same time . . . it made her uneasy that they should want to be that way. She suddenly understood entirely why Cesna had looked so puzzled and wary. She gave the tray and its contents a slight nudge toward them and said, "Given the effort you've made to get here, I won't waste any of your time. How can I help you?"

In words so light and smooth Jaime almost missed their import, the woman replied, "You can tell us where Arlen is."

At first she just blinked at them—and then her anger rose, overwhelming her sense of propriety. She scowled. "Have you come all this way just to be cruel? Because you can just turn around and go right back to Chesba with the news that I kicked you out on your—"

The man raised a hand, glancing at his companion. "Time is not so short that we can't do a better job of approaching the matter than
that
." He reached for the pitcher and poured himself a glass of what, by the color, was a bitter spice-bark tea to which Jaime had never grown accustomed but which seemed to be available at most business functions. "We have, of course, heard the recent dispatch news regarding the Council. The truth of the matter is that Chesba isn't sure it
is
the truth of the matter. It's one of the things we're here to find out."

"If it weren't true, what makes you think
I
would know?" Jaime said, not as graciously as she might in light of the man's attempt to appease her. She lightly rubbed the side of her nose—her slightly crooked nose, a reminder of just how ruthless wizardly politics in this country could get. Until her first arrival in Camolen, it had been straight. Straight and high-bridged and as Gallic as her name, a reflection of her naivete.

The last two years had wrung that naivete right out of her. She knew what people could do to each other, the things they could justify to themselves if they even bothered to justify them at all. So she was less gracious than she might have been, and quite probably more suspicious than she should have been.

That they took it in stride bothered her as much as anything. "Who more than you
would
?" said the man, somewhat apologetically.

"When it comes to Council business, Arlen is just as discreet as he's supposed to be," Jaime said. "I'm not even
of
Camolen, as you must know. When it comes down to it, Cesna, Natt, and Carey know more about his work than I do." As soon as she said it, she knew she'd made a mistake; the woman's head lifted, her eyebrows raising ever so slightly over unremarkable hazel eyes.

"That's a point," she said. "Perhaps we could speak to Carey. Chesba mentioned him, also."

Jaime gave a firm shake of her head. "No," she said. "He's busier than I am, trying to hold things together, and so far you've done nothing but waste my time—I'm not about to let you waste his. I'm not sure what information you're digging for, but if the Council's not dead, they surely have a good reason for making us think they are." Offhand, she couldn't think of one, though a little voice in her head sang at the thought that someone else believed Arlen might yet live. "I'm not about to second-guess them, and if Chesba wants to pursue his suspicions, he'll have to do it somewhere other than Anfeald."

The woman regarded her coldly; the man less so.
Good cop, bad cop
. Except they weren't cops at all.

Then what, exactly?
This world might be alien to her, but she'd been here long enough to know that the Landers used their individual precinct guard for enforcement and investigations, just as the council looked to the country-wide organization of peacekeepers. Spies, then? The Camolen CIA and KGB?

If so, then she doubted she could take anything they'd said at face value.

Unless, of course, they were simply and truly assistants to Chesba, poking and prodding where they didn't quite belong. She supposed if she were a lander during this crisis, she'd want to get her information from somewhere other than the general news dispatch the new Council had used to announce Camolen's loss.

While the woman had continued her cold regard, the man relaxed in his seat somewhat, ran a hand over hair that didn't need rearranging, and said with casual precision, "We know someone's been working magic here. Magic beyond Arlen's apprentices."

Caught flatly astonished for the second time in this conversation, Jaime nonetheless found herself recovering more quickly.
Dayna's world-travel spell.
She hadn't realized that her friend's quirky brilliance had brought her so far, that the spell had been beyond Natt and Cesna. She kept her reaction on the inside, showing Chesba's people nothing more than a mild shrug. "Which has what to do with what? If it had been Arlen, you would have recognized his touch."

The man shrugged. "Signatures have been distorted before. We learned that last summer, as I know you're aware."

This time his outrageousness made her laugh out loud. "You think Arlen would take mage lure to enhance his ability? The most powerful wizard in Camolen?"

"It might depend," the woman said, unaffected by Jaime's amusement, "on what he thought he was up against."

Jaime leaned her chin on her fist and looked at them both a moment. "You know," she said, "I've got things to do. I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish, but I'm not interested in participating. I'll have someone escort you out." No doubt it was the ultimate rudeness to fail to offer them a night's lodging—winter roads with disrupted road crews, the day more than half gone, the travel booths non-functional . . .

Too bad.

Thanks to Cesna's eavesdropping, there was a burly man waiting outside the door by the time the two nondescript visitors gathered themselves and left the room. Jaime recognized him as one of the groundskeepers, but he acquitted himself well in his role as an unobtrusive bouncer. Cesna herself joined Jaime in the room a few moments later, offering her little more than a puzzled look.

"And to think," Jaime told her, "we were worried that they were here to scope the place out for a new wizard."

"Scope?" Cesna said, and then shook her head, apparently putting the word into context. "That may still come," she said. "I don't know
what
this was about. But I think you should know . . . while you were talking to them, one of the grooms came up to let me know they'd been seen coming out of the job room, and I could have sworn I heard someone upstairs. Nothing obvious was missing, but—"

"But our courier assignments are pretty much there for the world to see," Jaime said. "Well, so they know who we've got out on the road. They don't know what we're carrying—and even if they did, I can't think of anything
eyes only
out there today, anyway."

"They were asking about Carey," Cesna said. "There's enough information in that room for them to figure out he's not here . . . and we don't expect him to
be
here any time soon."

Jaime breathed a frustrated curse. "And can they really tell," she asked, not at all sure she wanted the answer, "just what kind of heavy-duty magic they felt?"

Cesna gave her head a quick shake, toying with the ends of her ponytail. "No," she said. But then she hesitated, mouth barely open.

"What?" Jaime said flatly.

"No one can pinpoint an exact spell," Cesna said reluctantly, "but they can identify things like the complexity and power involved in a spell. And there are only so many spells with the same combination of those elements as the world-travel spell."

Jaime felt suddenly tired; she closed her eyes, rubbing the lids gently with her fingers. She didn't know what her visitors had truly wanted, or what they'd walked away with . . . or even what they'd do with whatever they'd learned. But they hadn't been straight with her, and that was never a good sign. And— Her head snapped up; she looked into Cesna's startled watery blue eyes. "They were in the stable,"

Jaime said. "They know the palomino's gone."

And like everyone else in Camolen, they knew that the palomino Ramble was the only living witness to what had happened.

"They could figure it out," she whispered. "Where Carey is . . . why he took the palomino . . ."

"Does it matter?" Cesna said, slowly sitting in a chair without taking her gaze from Jaime's.

She hoped not. But— "Only," she said, "if they don't want anyone else to know what Ramble knows."

J
ess crouched along the outside wall of the squat, brown-painted nature center, not quite willing to sink down to the wet ground. Around her the park offered the very picture of happy nature—the rain stopped, the songbirds out in force, and just enough sunshine to make diamond sparks off the bright green leaves.

It'd been a long time since she'd been this miserable.

Even now, the park naturalist stood alongside the green Metroparks pickup truck in the small parking area before the nature center, talking to the ranger behind the wheel; both of them glanced her way with alarming frequency.