"No!" A girl's voice, clearly distraught, the girl herself the merest suggestion of shadow behind the blare of her aura. "Sam, leave me alone!"
"Violet, I know you're upset, but you can't just refuse—at least think about it!"
"I
have
thought about it!" the girl cried, spinning around to face her pursuer. "The fact is that I'm not a healer! I don't know enough!"
"You know more than you think, right now." Sam's voice was calm, with an edge that suggested to Meri that it was hard-won. "Mother told me you were learning your lore well and that she was certain that you would be her equal or better."
"Gran
died
!" Violet shouted, and suddenly, she was bent sideways, like a bird protecting a broken wing. Her voice wavered, blurry with tears even as her aura sharpened painfully with the force of her grief. "She died because I didn't know enough to save her!"
"She died because it was time," Sam countered, which was, Meri thought, only common sense. The Newman stepped forward and gathered the girl into his arms, their combined auras thundering against Meri's senses.
"Violet," Sam murmured. "I know. We all expected Gran to be with us forever. I know that you haven't had your complete training. You've been flung from 'prentice to master all of a sudden. But I know you can do it;
Gran
knew you could do it."
The girl continued to sob. Meri saw their silhouettes through the blare of their auras: the girl with her head against Sam's shoulder as he gently stroked her hair, offering comfort and, perhaps, common sense.
Hidden from the two Newmen by the kindness of the tree, Jamie Moore moved—and stilled, which Meri considered well done. Their presence would only increase the girl's grief and Meri, for one, had no wish to approach that hectic aura.
"Listen," Sam murmured. "What if I ask the Engenium to send us a Fey Healer for a little time? Just until you find your feet and get over the—"
"No . . ." the girl moaned. "Fey heal by—even Father—he knows the plants, but he draws on their
kest
. The process of making a poultice, or brewing a restorative tea—it's not what they do . . ."
Delicately, Meri queried the trees, receiving a bewildering series of images: a white-haired woman working over a table, drying leaves, grinding roots, making pastes and liqueurs . . .
The healing arts
, the elitch added,
take many forms
.
So it would seem
, Meri replied, bemused.
"Let us send for another healer," Violet sobbed against Sam's shoulder. "Before I kill someone else in my ignorance."
"Send?" Sam sounded honestly baffled, as Meri, his fingers clutching knife hilt, went cold all over. "Where would we send, child? As far as I—and Lady Sian—know, we are the only folk of our kind on this side of the hellroad."
"Then send to the other side!" Violet cried.
There was a moment of charged silence before Sam answered, his voice chilly. "You are overwrought. Come, let me take you inside. You should have a cordial and go to sleep. Rest is what you need."
"Sam—"
"No," he said firmly. "We will talk again
after
you have rested. In fact," his voice grew a little louder. "It is time for Jamie to seek his bed, as well."
He turned, then, guiding the bent and still weeping girl back toward the house. Jamie sighed and shifted away from the tree.
"Sam's got good eyes," he said. "Even Father says so." He sighed again. "I'd better go." He danced back a step—then darted forward, touching Meri on the shoulder as if they were comrades of the branch. "Thank you, Master Vanglelauf."
"You are welcome, Jamie Moore," Meri murmured. "I think that Sam is correct; rest if you can, and survey your thoughts when you are calmer."
The boy nodded. "That's exactly what Gran used to say," he murmured, his voice husky. "Root and branch, Master."
"Root and branch, Sprout," Meri answered, and watched the child slip away through the shadows.
Becca paused, her hand on the vine-wrapped gate, staring. Unlike the overpruned, stringently controlled grounds around Altimere's country house, the garden here in Xandurana had been—well, scarcely a garden at all. An exuberance of green life, the plants had clamored over each other, mixed willy-nilly, grudgingly ceding a few handspans to the thin walkway. It had hardly been possible to move in the garden without stepping on leaves, bending stems, or endangering flowers. She recalled her efforts to prune and thin the overfull beds, not to impose order or artifice, but to give the plants room—and she recalled how they filled in again, almost before she had cleared the clippings away.
She remembered that last day, sitting on the bench beneath the elitch tree, duainfey leaves in her lap, green life rioting all about her, and the tree-or-trees sharing her thoughts.
"What has happened?" she breathed.
You spoke to us of seasons, of an orderly march from seed to seeding, each plant according to its nature, all according to their kind. The memory was buried deep, but the trees recall.
It was true, Becca saw. All of what she knew to be summer plants were sere, as if kissed by autumn. The breeze, however, was not autumnal, but springlike, precisely as always, nor had the height of the sun in the sky shifted by so much as a finger's width. Across the gate, the thin walkway lay uncontested all the way to the back door of Altimere's house.
"Trees," she said.
Yes, Gardener?
"Is Altimere at home?"
"He is not," Sian said from just beyond her left shoulder. "If he were, we should be hearing the bells, summoning all of the Queen's Constant to their places at the table."
"He might have no wish to—to bruit his return about," Becca said. "And trees might notice what others do not."
"Depend upon it, the trees of this city notice much, and forget little. But they do not notice
all
, and things may be hidden from them. Also . . ."
Becca looked over her shoulder and up, into a pair of ironical sea-colored eyes. "Also?" she repeated.
"It is well to recall that trees—wise as they are and amiable—are . . . naïve with regard to certain matters. I rejoice in a cousin who is Wood Wise—as unpredictable and as willful as anyone might wish. Leaving aside what his kin might make of him, he is much beloved of the trees, and even he owns that their thought is sometimes beyond him."
Altimere
, the voice was loud inside her head,
has passed beyond our ken, Gardener.
Becca's heart lurched. Was he dead, then? Was she free of him at last, and truly? Her eyes filled, the tears making the garden into a wonder-weave of greens and silvers. She blinked, clearing her eyes, her hand gripping the gate so tightly her knuckles ached.
Sian reached past her to work the latch. The gate swung open, and Becca staggered, unbalanced, into Altimere's garden.
"Forgive my hastiness," the Engenium said, dryly. "I have been long absent from my own country and yearn to be on the road to home." She slid a steadying hand beneath Becca's elbow. "Gather your belongings quickly, Rebecca Beauvelley."
As simple as that. And yet, Becca thought, as she walked up the pathway, each step a compromise between fear and necessity, how could it be otherwise? Sian was High Fey. Exalted, and full of power.
She
could have no fear of meeting Altimere, of having her will overridden and her good name destroyed, all in the service of another's ambition.
Becca's feet slowed on the path. Mindful of Sian at her back, she forced herself to move on, knees trembling. There was the place where they had taken her, one with his manhood in her mouth, the other buried in her anus, while Altimere—her
protector!
, who had named her a treasure of his house, whom she had trusted, once, and found fair—while Altimere had looked on, his protection withheld, even the false wantonness stripped from her so that her abusers might fully
savor
her anguish . . .
"Rebecca Beauvelley?" Sian's voice was low, tinged with an emotion Becca in her agitation could not name. Perhaps it was concern. Or perhaps it was only boredom.
Becca bit her lip, drawing blood, trembling where she stood, unable to go on, the events of that night before her eyes, overlaying even the bank of sweetcarpet where she and Benidik . . .
"Rebecca Beauvelley?" Sian's voice was sharper, now.
Becca cleared her throat. Benidik, she thought. Benidik had promised. She did not believe that the Fey woman cared—she would not believe so much of any Fey again. But Benidik . . . might be careless. She had been in Zaldore's train, which meant she was no friend to Diathen the Queen. It might be that Benidik would see advantage to herself, in letting the evidence to Altimere's crimes slip away.
"I ask," she gasped, her voice odd and breathless, her eyes on the sweep of purple flowers, recalling promises made in the throes of passion. "I ask that I be placed in the care of the High Fey Benidik. Until such time as the Queen has need of me."
Behind her, Sian laughed. "You do not circumvent the will of a Queen so easily, Rebecca Beauvelley! My problem Diathen has declared you to be and my problem you shall, I fear, remain, until such time as she declares elsewise. Gather your things, now, and quickly."
It had, Becca told herself, been worth the asking, though she might have known Sian would refuse her. She forced her feet to move again on the path, and raised her hand to wipe at her cheek, unsurprised to find that it was wet.
Sian is not an ill friend, Gardener
, the tree or trees said for the second time.
She is canny, and strong, and sometimes wise.
"
Sometimes
wise?" Becca muttered, forcing her feet to move again on the path.
She is yet young.
Her feet faltered again as Becca approached the season wheel she had planted in an attempt to demonstrate a proper cycle to what she had then thought of as the intelligence of the place. Like the rest of the garden, the summer plants showed sere and brown. The plants of the other three seasons, however, showed as hale and hardy as if they were in the peak of their growth.
"There is a
process
," she said, speaking to the trees as if they were a peculiarly backward 'prentice. "Seedlings begin; they grow, leaf, blossom, give fruit if that is their nature, fade, and fail. They do not spring forth and stand tall in all the strength of their youth until they are struck down."
"What would you teach them?" Sian asked, stopping beside her and considering the wheel in her turn.
"The orderly progression of the seasons," Becca said with a sigh and a shake of her head. "To have all and everything bloom at its own discretion is—unnatural!—and in the end, dangerous. For plant and Fey alike," she added, for the trees' benefit. She turned her head slightly, considering the side of Sian's face. Comely, as the High Fey were, and if her skin was somewhat tanned, it was smooth and unlined. Surely, Becca thought, she was too young—but so had Altimere seemed youthful.
"Were you in the war, Engenium?"
Sian laughed. "Wind and wave! The war was done and the
keleigh
in place long before I had accumulated
kest
enough to braid my hair, much less fight!" She sobered, met Becca's eyes and shook her head. "Not many of the Elders remain. Donaden, Altimere, Sanalda—"
Becca cringed, the smell of blood suddenly overpowering the sweet scent of growing things.
"Art well, Rebecca Beauvelley?"
She shook her head, swallowing hard. Compelled or not, she was surely not about to confess the murder of one of the few remaining Elders.
"I am frightened," she said, instead, which was only the truth. "What if the Gossamers try to hold me?"
"Now, I knew there was a reason that I asked to accompany you," Sian said, her voice sharper than humor might call for. "And soon we shall know. It appears that you are expected."
The door into the kitchen was open. Becca's steps faltered, even as the voice of the tree spoke inside her head.
The lightless ones approach, Gardener
.
Indeed, they did, and she saw them as never she had before—clearly. Not as ghostly gloves, but as pale, bloated shadows from which velvet-tipped tentacles waved softly.
A scream rose in her throat; she gritted her teeth, but not before a soft whimper escaped. The Gossamers paused, their aspect suddenly tentative, as if they were as wary of her as she of them. Becca forced herself to take a breath—another, and another. She forced herself to recall the many kindnesses she had received from the Gossamers: They had bathed her, fed her, watched over her—even assisted her in the garden! While they were certainly Altimere's creatures, yet she had never felt that they wished her harm—and had often felt that they had cared for her beyond the scope of whatever orders they had received from their master.
"Good day," she said, her voice not as strong as she would have liked. "I require a bath."
Before her, the misshapen shadows roiled. A pair of Gossamers detached themselves from the confusion, and faded, leaving a pair yet to confront Becca and Sian, tentacles waving inquisitively.
Her stomach roiled uneasily. Becca swallowed, and motioned unsteadily. "The Engenium is my guest. Pray—"
Pray, what?
she thought wildly.
Treat her as you would myself?
"Pray treat her with all respect due the cousin of the Queen."
There was a small sound from behind her right shoulder, as if Sian had sneezed. Becca waited, but the Fey woman made no other sound.
"Very well," Becca said. She moved forward one deliberate step, then another. The Gossamers drifted back from her approach, escorting them properly into the house. They passed through the tidy, cold kitchen, past the hall to the dining room, where a single place was set at the gleaming wooden table, to the entrance hall.
There the Gossamers halted, transparent nightmares barely visible against the textured woods.
Becca turned toward Sian, who had followed, silent.
"Can you see the Gossamers?" she asked politely, and gained an ironic lift of a neat brow for her courtesy.