Changespell Legacy (22 page)

Carey flinched. But as Dayna scowled at him, he gathered himself and said, "We'll just have to hope his desire to be a horse again is stronger than his hatred. Because cooperating with us is his only chance for that to happen."

Even Suliya looked unhappy, as if suddenly realizing in what she'd become involved. "It's not so bad, being human," she said in a low voice, not quite looking at Jess. "You spend most of your time that way now."

"Not so bad," Jess said. "Because I have a
choice
."

Carey rubbed the heel of his hand against the side of his thigh, his expression masked by fatigue. "Just see what you can do to help him along." The words sounded dragged out of him; Dayna realized anew that he hadn't rested after the rough transition between worlds. She'd haul him into the guest room to rest if she had to; they needed to be in top form to get through this. All of them. Ready for anything.

Jess answered by reentering the stall; the palomino instantly stopped his struggle with the tunic, letting it settle back into place. Having been chastised once, he didn't quite puff himself up as before, but watched her from the back of the stall with a certain wariness, clearly working up to redisplaying his magnificence for her.

She changed the angle of her head, turned, and lifted her leg just enough so only her toes touched the bedding. Instantly sulky, he subsided.

"Burnin' poot," Suliya said, wonder-struck tones entirely at odds with her youthful slang. "It's just like watching two horses, clear as anything."

"That," Dayna said, looking at Carey, "is exactly the point."

"
Ramble
," Jess said, getting a clear reaction to his name, then pointing at him and repeating it. He watched her—alert, as instantly aware of her true identity as she'd been with the changed animals the summer before and interested simply because she was a mare and he a stallion. She gestured to herself.

"Dun Lady's Jess. Jess."

And so his learning started. Learning she rewarded with a less stern attitude on her part than on their initial encounter, less of a rebuff to his flirting, and on occasion an actual responsiveness—the willingness to admire him, to give him a throaty nicker of interest.

She wasn't in season. If he'd known her well, he wouldn't have attended her so. But he was alone, and she was a new mare, and—separated from his world, all he knew was to impress himself upon her.

She fell into it naturally. Thinking as he thought, seeing his world through both his newly human eyes and her barely aged memories. Feeling his frustrations when he couldn't comfortably move about on four legs—he stubbornly tried it for a while—and understanding his sullen retreat into himself each time he discovered anew that he was indeed human.

But as she had, he learned quickly. He understood her words long before he played with forming his own. And no matter how she struggled to deal with her mixed feelings, her growing uncertainty about how her human friends and lover had handled their decisions, her anger at his situation, Ramble somehow knew how much she cared.

No one other than Jess went into his stall. He wouldn't allow it.

Jaime sat behind Carey's desk off the job room and let her face sink into her hands. Not despair, exactly . . .

Anticipation.

Rather than getting better, her attacks of mind-boggling misery had become distinctly worse. She never knew just when in the evening they'd hit; she'd taken to carrying a stoppered vial of medicated wine with her, and had learned to throw it back in a single swift gulp at the first sign of trouble. Simney understood the problem no better than ever, and Cesna made a project of digging up any and all reference books in Arlen's collection with the slimmest chance of providing clues; as far as Jaime knew, she was poring through one of them now.

Meanwhile, Jaime tried to reconcile the large number of pending messages with the much smaller number of Anfeald's couriers and the fact that she'd pulled a horse from the roster this evening. Too many ribs showing through his winter coat, and he'd stumbled with his rider today. No matter how many messages waited, she wasn't putting him on the roads tomorrow. At the same time, the messages funneling through Anfeald represented the best efforts of the precincts to keep their services running, the checkspells in place, the people safe . . . all things not to be taken lightly.

Still, it wasn't like any of the deliveries contained the answer to the mystery of what had happened to the Council, or why someone would come looking for Arlen, misrepresenting themselves as Chesba's people.

A quick run had confirmed that much. Imposters, come and gone without leaving any clues to their true nature and intent.

"Jaime."

She looked up toward the job room door and found Linton, the ranking courier and, as she thought of him, her co-conspirator in running the stables. He hadn't asked for the job; he hadn't ever wanted to do anything but ride. But he knew the horses and he knew the riders, and he was happy enough to offer his wisdom if she would be their mouthpiece.

Now he looked at her with concern, his face scratched and bruised at the leading edge of a thinning hairline, his thick wool shirt ripped, and something unidentifiable dangling from his hand. "Are you all right?"

She gave a slight snort. "Me? I'm fine. Just tired, like everyone else. And waiting. If I have to drug myself insensible, Gertli"—her erstwhile bouncer from several days earlier—"is ready to drag me back upstairs."

"With any luck it'll check for a bit," he said, and laid his unidentifiable something on the scarred wooden desktop. Long, muddy brown, writhing . . .

"It looks like giant freeze-dried earthworms in a mating dance," she observed. "And what happened to you? Looks like you got into a fight with a tree."

"Exactly that," he said, plucking ruefully at the tear in his sleeve. "I ran into something out on the trail."

"I would have thought the horses too tired to shy at
anything
by now."

He entered the room, slumping down in the single, plain wooden chair placed haphazardly at the corner of Carey's desk. A half-mended bridle hung over the back of it, and Linton sat unheeding on the thin saddle pad someone had dropped carelessly on the seat. "If she hadn't," he said, nodding at the earthworms, "I'd probably look something like that."

She stared again at the object, unable to make any sense of it, and shook her head. "I don't understand."

"Those are the ends of my reins, and see if I don't ride with shorter ones from now on."

She gave him an impatient frown. "Just
tell
me. What are you talking about?" But in the back of her mind, she thought she might know. She recalled Dayna and Jess's description of the meltdown area where the Council had died and she was very much afraid that she might know.

He shifted uneasily. "We weren't going very fast . . . just a sloppy little jog. Thank the guides—because this thing popped up on the edge of the trail between one blink and another." He shook his head. "It just . . . it almost looked like a giant fist squeezed the trees together, and what I saw was what oozed out between the fingers. Cammi booted right out of there—did a turnabout. The reins must've whipped out into that . . . spot."

"And your shirt?"

"Jagged edges of something that weren't there an instant earlier. Not a single instant." Linton shuddered.

"Never much thought of myself as a coward, Jaime, but I'll tell you I never want to see the like again."

She didn't doubt it. Jess and Dayna had had the same reaction to the area where the Council died.

But . . .

It was dark outside. Carey's personal job room was deep in the hold with no access to sunlight, but Jaime knew well enough what time it was; she had reason to keep track these days. It was dark now, and it had been dark for a while. "How'd you even see it?"

"I had a light with me—we all carry 'em now. Too easy to take a bad step in the dark when you're tired, no matter how well you know the trail." He rubbed a hand down his face, pulling his features long for a moment. "Guides saved me on that one. Had to have been more than luck, because I'm telling you—I hadn't triggered the light for more'n an instant before I came upon this mess."

"Damn good luck if that's all it was."

Linton, distracted, twisted to look over his shoulder. "Gertli's in the job room. You expecting him?"

Jaime shook her head. "I'm in here," she called; the evening misery was later than usual today; perhaps he'd gotten worried. "I'm still okay."

"That's not it," Gertli said, wearing a slightly puzzled expression—habitual of late—as he peered through the doorway at her. By dint of his size alone, he'd recently come to act as an unofficial peacekeeper for Jaime . . . a role for which his gentle personality left him ill-suited. But the precinct peacekeepers were currently as overworked and understaffed as the couriers, and Jaime'd had little choice but to recruit him.

Gertli frowned, an expression that made his harsh features—big-boned, with brows that met in the middle at the slightest excuse and a once-damaged nose slanting off to the side—downright fearsome.

"Just had someone pop up in the travel chamber. She says . . ." and he glanced outside the job room and lowered his voice dramatically, "she says she's with the Council. The
new
one."

Jaime and Linton exchanged quick and equally startled glances; then she looked down at herself, quickly assessing her appearance—not much better than when she'd welcomed the two "assistants" who hadn't been from Chesba at all. "Here?" she asked Linton. "Or in one of the meeting rooms? I suppose the null room would be an insult . . ."

Gertli cleared his throat. "She's waiting
here
." A roll of his eyes indicated the job room behind him.

"Guides," Linton sighed. He pulled his chin again and said, "Well, if she's that eager to talk to us"—with no warning, he meant, and the notable lack of courtesy to fail to stay in the comfortable chamber area until the unprepared hosts could be found and apprised of her arrival—"then by all means. Here is fine."

He stood, removed the bridle and saddle pad from the chair, and looked around the room, at a loss.

"Here," Jaime said, taking the gear and dumping it behind the desk, along with the remains of the reins.

Linton came around to stand by her side, and by then the woman had supplanted Gertli at the doorway.

She was no one Jaime had met before . . . or if Jaime
had
seen her, the woman simply hadn't made an impression. Too bland in nature and presentation, with a costly wizard-cloth longsuit in the most subdued of autumn colors that did nothing to bring out her small features or complement her olive complexion.

She'd swept her hair back in a stern up-do too immobile to be anything but magically fixed in place.

Jaime did her best to keep dismay from her face, but Linton showed it for both of them. She couldn't blame him. Between the precipitous arrival of the wizard and her unyielding appearance, Jaime couldn't imagine this would turn into anything close to a social call.

"Welcome to Anfeald," she said, leaving out any excuses for the crude reception. Saying anything else would carry implicit criticism for the woman's failure to warn them. The dispatch was, after all, working well enough for
that
. She gestured at the seat and said to Gertli, who still hovered uncertainly in the job room beyond, "Let Natt and Cesna know we have a visitor, will you? And ask the kitchen to send some refreshments."

"That won't be necessary," the woman said, twitching the long tails of her suit aside as she sat. "I doubt I'll be here that long. Arlen may not have mentioned me to you; my name is Hon Chandrai." With title, no less, on a remarkably informal world that rarely used them. "While I was on the Secondary Council I did some work with him on the world-travel checkspells. Please . . . let me extend my condolences. These are far from the circumstances under which I wish I'd become a member of the Council. Arlen was an extraordinary wizard."

"He was," Jaime said, "an extraordinary
man
." The new Council, at least, didn't seem to think Arlen still lived, unlike her previous two visitors.

Jaime herself . . . knew she'd never quite believe, not until she saw the evidence with her own eyes. Or heard it from someone who had been there.

Like the palomino. Gone, now . . .

And this woman knew it. Jaime gave her a sudden sharp look, saw Chandrai watching her with hawk-like focus, her remarkably dark eyes cold but otherwise expressionless.

Of course they knew. Jaime should have been expecting this visit from the moment she'd ushered the falsely identified man and woman out of the null room, and even more so once Cesna mentioned how easily the invoked world-travel spell could be categorized as what it was by those with the skills to perceive it in the first place.

Like someone who'd actually worked with Arlen on the checkspell.

Linton stood at the side of the battered desk, watching the swift, unspoken byplay between them and looking utterly lost. Jaime felt for him . . . but he'd either catch up along the way or wait for an explanation.

Without preamble, Chandrai spoke—
Hon
Chandrai, and every gesture and expression seemed designed to remind them of the fact. Did she think she'd intimidate Jaime, who spent her time—her
personal
time—with Chandrai's superior in their field of magic? Who had testified against a rogue wizard and stood her ground against that wizard's sadistic apprentice? Who had twice helped Camolen avoid crises only slightly less threatening than the one they faced now? Chandrai said: "Unusual circumstances notwithstanding, I'm afraid you've got a lot to answer for."

"You said
what
?" Linton blurted, a borderline polite version of
I beg your pardon
.

Jaime knew what the woman was talking about . . . but she wasn't about to suggest it. So she raised her eyebrows in surprise and didn't commit herself to words. Chandrai might not intimidate her . . . but the truth was that Jaime had no idea just how much power the woman
did
have over her. Could Jaime be detained for her participation in the forbidden spell? Would the Council even bother, with everything else on their plates?