Deliberately, she inhaled. Again, the heat decreased.
A third breath, deeper than the first two, and she was merely herself, somewhat unsteady on her feet; her head light with pain and fatigue.
She raised her hand to see what it was that she held—and gasped, her heart stuttering in terror, as she saw in memory what she had not made sense from in the midst of the fire.
The object in her hand—a bone-dry disk from which the thinnest possible thread of blue emerged, wafting delicately across the table, until it became part of the ragged cloak of greens and blues drifting about the slim woodsman. She saw him plainly now—not a man at all, but Fey, his face stern and scarred; his uncovered eye as green as new leaves.
Bound again
, she thought, and shook her head in despair.
Rebecca, you fool!
Gardener
, the tree addressed her with gentle urgency.
You must not shame Sian before those who shelter under her branches. Apologize for challenging her, and ask her aid sweetly.
Becca blinked. The tree offered good counsel, she admitted to herself. The Landed were courteous to each other; to be otherwise was to encourage misbehavior among the subordinate orders. She cleared her throat and looked to the Fey woman, standing taut and grim just across the table.
"Sian, please forgive me," she said, hating the way her voice shook. "I should not have challenged you. But, truly, Nancy is not a danger, and—and I wish you would help me to mend her! The trees said—that you might."
For a moment, she feared that she had not been sufficiently respectful, and if Nancy was to lose her life because of Becca's ineptness, when she had given so much—
Sian inclined her head.
"All you need do is renew its
kest
," she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Becca stared at her, stomach knotting. Renew Nancy's
kest
! she thought wildly. Did the Fey expect her to mount the tiny silver body here and now? How—but wait! In gentler times, Altimere had taken
kest
from her with a simple kiss.
"Renew her
kest
," she whispered, looking down at the tiny figure. Was—no,
surely
the silvery glow was dimmer now! Would Nancy cease to exist, when her light died completely?
That was by no means an experiment Becca desired to make. She bent down and pressed her lips gently against Nancy's hard mouth.
She felt a wash of warmth, and a connection, as if a hook had seated firmly in its eye. Dazzled, she stepped back, and Nancy rushed into the air, a shooting star in reverse, turning exuberant handsprings in the air.
Becca smiled; she heard someone laugh, and someone else sigh. Nancy dropped to the table. Kneeling, she raised Becca's weak and battered left hand and tenderly kissed her fingers.
Tears rose. Becca blinked them away with a sigh.
"There," Sian said briskly; "what had I said? Now—" She looked about her, and nodded to the woman limned in copper standing at the foot of the table. "Elizabeth, this is, as you have heard, Rebecca Beauvelley. With your permission, I would leave any further discussion until we have all eaten and rested."
Elizabeth inclined her head gravely. "I think that's wise, Lady. We all want our beds, I think."
As if he took her words for a command, Sam Moore moved toward the door, his big hands making absurdly delicate shooing motions.
"Go on home, now," he said, comfortably. "Let Miss Beauvelley get settled in and have her hurts looked to. There'll be plenty of time for questions and talking on the morrow." He paused to look at the old man leaning on his stick, who in turned looked to Elizabeth.
"Thank you, Jack," that lady said. "I'll have just another word or two with Lady Sian."
"That's well, then," the old man said, and nodded briefly to Sian. "Lady," he said, and looked across the table, meeting Becca's eyes firmly. "Daughter of an Earl, are you, Miss?"
"Yes," she said, and hoped most earnestly that the old man would not ask her
which
Earl.
Happily, he did not ask, but smiled and gave her a nod. "Not many in New Hope know what an Earl is. You rest easy, here. It's good land."
Becca felt tears sting her eyes, and managed a smile. "Thank you."
He turned, stick striking the floor, and went out the door ahead of Sam, who closed it firmly behind.
Becca drew a hard breath, raised her hand and pointed at the one-eyed Fey with his ragtag aura blowing about him. "What is your name?"
He raised a disdainful eyebrow. "Meripen Vanglelauf," he said, his voice light and cool.
She glanced down at the flat, round bone in her hand, looked back at him, and threw it as hard as her aching muscles allowed.
"I refuse this!"
He leaned—no, he
flowed
forward, scooping the thing out of the air. It vanished among long brown fingers as he inclined his head.
"Meri," Sian said, "is the cousin of whom I told you, Rebecca Beauvelley."
"As unpredictable and as willful as one might wish," Becca murmured, remembering, and saw the Fey's eyebrow rise again.
"Master Vanglelauf has kindly come to help us with our trees," Elizabeth said, her calm, commonplace voice drawing Becca's eye. She smiled and stepped forward, her gaze dropping briefly to Nancy, kneeling yet on the table before Becca.
"Welcome you, Miss Beauvelley," she said softly. "I am Elizabeth Moore, Sam's sister. Now that your friend has been mended, it would be best if you let Violet tend to you. There's a bed here, and Violet will stay with you. I will send over food, and ale, and we'll talk—" She looked to Sian, but more, Becca thought, as one issuing an order, than asking permission—"on the morrow. Lady?"
"I bow to your arrangements, Elizabeth," Sian said with a blitheness that made Becca shiver. "Thank you." She gave Becca a perfectly cheerful grin. "Sleep well, Rebecca Beauvelley. Violet—I thank you."
"Lady," Violet said softly, from behind Becca.
Sian nodded, and turned, slipping her hand 'round the other Fey's arm. "Come, Meri, you must be starved yourself."
The door opened, and they exited, followed, after another smile and an earnest look, by Elizabeth Moore, who drew the door closed behind her.
"Now," Violet said, on a long exhalation. "Let's bind those hands, Miss."
"Master Vanglelauf, please allow me to thank you for . . . what you did for Jamie." Elizabeth Moore's voice was grave, her aura casting a bright copper shadow before her.
"No thanks are needed," he said, truthfully. "It was no good place for a sprout."
"I . . . see." They walked a few paces in silence, the Newoman, the Engenium, and himself. He held the sunshield inside the curl of his fingers, its dry surface prickling his skin.
"Would it be possible to tell me," Elizabeth Moore said, and he heard the sharp edge beneath her delicate tone, "what it was that endangered Jamie?"
Sian said nothing. Meri swallowed his sigh.
"His
kest
—you understand that a sprout has very little, and is naturally not skilled in its uses—his
kest
was drawn to the . . . contest between Sian and Elizabeth Beauvelley." He paused, weighing what he had just said, and judged that something more was needed. "You mustn't think him inept; it was an . . . unconsidered display by persons of strong
kest.
I was nearly drawn in, myself."
"My apologies, Elizabeth," Sian said softly. "My failure to rule my temper endangered your son. It is not how I treat those who live within my honor."
"I know that, Lady," the Newoman said, as if her mind were on something else. "Many tempers were drawn thin tonight. Master Vanglelauf."
His eyebrows twitched upward in surprise. "Tree-Kin?"
She made a light sound somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. "I see that the wood has told you all. Palin, who is Jamie's sire, promised me two children—one to follow me, and one to follow him. It was Palin who told me that
kest
is the ability to draw upon the strength of one's soul."
Meri blinked.
Soul?
he queried the trees, and the elitch answered immediately.
The inner fires, Ranger. Palin and the Old Woman were fast friends and spent much time disputing this point.
"I am assured that this is an apt description," he told Elizabeth Moore.
She laughed outright this time. "How convenient to talk to trees without the need of a translator!" she said, as they came to her door. "Please, thank them for their care of us, Master Vanglelauf." She turned. "Lady, will you come in?"
"Thank you, no," Sian answered. "I think I have disturbed your peace quite enough for one day. We will talk tomorrow, Elizabeth."
"As you say, Lady." She turned—and turned back again.
"Miss Beauvelley," she said. "She speaks to trees and she has the ability to draw upon the strength of her soul."
"That would seem to be the case," Sian said dryly.
Elizabeth Moore nodded. "Then isn't she Fey?" she asked, and stepped into her house, closing the door gently behind her.
* * *
"That was well done, Cousin, I thank you." They were beneath the central elitch, Sian with her back against the trunk and her feet drawn up on the bench; Meri reclining in the grass.
"Catching the boy before he was engulfed?" he said drowsily. "It
was
well done, and I accept your thanks. You might have bound us
all
, Sian!"
"So I might have. Rebecca Beauvelley has the art of trying tempers well in hand. She will
not
believe me her friend, though I have done everything possible—did I bind her will?" She moved a hand in a wide, shapeless gesture. "I did not! And she repays me by running away! But, no—I compliment you upon your timely rescue of Elizabeth's son, but I thank you for binding Diathen's prisoner."
Meri felt abruptly cold.
"I bound her for a moment, to disarm her, and allow you to disengage," he said.
"Is that so? Perhaps you had best consult your ally, Sea Ranger."
Root and branch!
Bound
to a Newoman? To
that
Newoman, who could subsume him with a careless thought?
He shivered, suddenly ill, and snatched the sunshield out, seeing the thin strands of
kest
drawn into it—one a familiar tangle of greens and blues, the other an ungiving shine of purest gold.
"No," he said aloud. "I refuse this!"
"Cousin, think!" Sian cried from her seat on the bench. "This solves the conundrum of how to respect Rebecca Beauvelley as the covenant directs. Bound to you, she may remain awake and in pursuit of her own necessities. Except as they involve running away and attempting to hide herself from Diathen's summons, of course."
"Of course," Meri said, staring at the sunshield, the two threads drawn into it . . . "There is, however, a problem."
"Meri, do
not
say that you are afraid of her! She is
a child
, without the least education or understanding of her power. You—"
"Yes, yes, I am old in guile, though my fires are banked. But that is not . . . precisely the problem, Sian."
She stirred on the bench. "What is it, then?"
"Why only that it seems we are not so much bound to each other, as we are both bound to the sunshield."
She had, Becca thought, groggily, amassed an astonishing number of bruises and contusions over the last day. Violet had undressed her, sighing over the stained and torn riding dress, and probed for broken bones. Discovering none, she sponged and treated the various scrapes, and wrapped Becca in a blanket.
"I am going to brew you some aleth tea," the girl said, "to help with the pain. Dinner ought to be coming soon. Is there anything else you would like?"
"A bath," Becca said, her eyelids heavy.
Violet sighed and shook her head. "You are
not
to get those hands wet tonight, Miss! You know as well as I do that they need time to heal. In the morning, after you've had a full night of sleep, we'll look at what we have."
"Nancy can bathe me," Becca protested. "And I can hold my hands above the water."
"
Not
tonight," Violet returned firmly. "Now, you sit right here while I brew the tea."
Her own mistress Sonet must have sounded just this way when she had been a new-made healer, Becca thought, and smiled.
"I will sit right here," she assured the girl. "I will not take a bath, and I will," she added, wincing as her shifting on the chair woke protest from half a dozen bruises, "welcome the aleth tea."
Violet smiled shyly and touched Becca quickly on the shoulder before darting away.
Becca sighed and looked about her approvingly. The bed and chair were separated from the larger workroom by a wooden screen that could be moved, or even removed, if the healer wished to keep a closer eye on her patient while she worked. Sonet had a similar arrangement in her workshop, for those patients who required her close attention.
On the other side of the screen, she could hear Violet Moore moving quietly, the slosh of water being poured into a kettle and the rustle of dried leaves. It was, she thought, sighing, all very homey. How easy it was to forget that she was
not
at home, but across the
keleigh
, and once again the bound prisoner of a Fey.
She bit her lip as a wave of desolation rose, and closed her eyes. It was no matter, the tears leaked beneath her lashes and dampened her cheeks. Becca swallowed, hard. She did not want Violet Moore to see her cry, and yet, she was so tired. She wanted to sleep, and to wake up and find that—from the moment she had accepted Kelmit Tarrington's invitation to ride in his phaeton to this very moment where she sat, weeping ashamedly—to find that it was all and nothing more than a bad dream. She would wake, and rise, and put on her dressing gown. Her cousin's maid would comb out her hair and dress it with a pretty ribbon, and she would meet Irene in the breakfast parlor, to drink chocolate and tell over their plans for the day.
Becca bent her head. "Nancy," she whispered.
There was a
poof
, as if a small wind had manifested in this protected corner, and cool hands patted her cheek. Becca opened her eyes and beheld her maid, tiny head cocked to one side, as if awaiting orders.