A Tapestry of Spells (26 page)

He was going to have to do something about it.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted to, as long as that something had nothing to do with magic. Unfortunately, there was no denying that what ate at her flesh had nothing to do with a normal wound and everything to do with some vile spell.

Of his father’s, as it happened.

“Can a mage heal himself?” she asked, looking up at him in the faint light of the morning sun.

He lifted an eyebrow briefly. “Many have tried, or so I’ve heard. Unsuccessfully, I might add.”

“Do they merely fail at the task or is there something more interesting that happens?”

“I couldn’t say” He gently pulled her sleeve down over her arm again. “I think the binding principle is that healing can only be given away.”

“Lest a mage hole up in a cave by himself and forgo any contact with others?” she asked, looking up at him unflinchingly.

He shifted uncomfortably. “I’m just your guardsman,” he said. “What would I know of any of it, in truth?”

She pursed her lips. “Some guardsman. Where were you last night?”

“Running.”

“Not all night.” She frowned up at him. “I’m paying you to guard my back and here you are, having scampered off without a word.”

She reminded him sharply of his six-year-old sister who’d been slain. He had a very vivid memory of Mhorghain putting her hands on her hips and glaring up at their eldest brother, who’d stood three feet taller than she, when he’d tried to tell her what to do once too often. Ruith had to lean back against a very handy wall until he could catch his breath. He attempted a smile, but that only seemed to irritate Sarah more.

“Do you
want
me to leave you here, bleeding to death in this alley? And stop your bloody smirking. You’re not as immune to me as you think you are.”

If she only had any idea ... Nay, he wasn’t immune at all.

“Don’t do it again,” she added. “Leave me, that is.”

He bowed his head and rubbed the back of his neck for a moment or two, then looked at her from under his eyebrows. “Very well,” he said, finally. “I won’t.”

“I should point out that you didn’t leave me before; you deserted me. ’Tis a more serious offense.”

He pursed his lips to keep from smiling, which he supposed would have resulted in his being altogether more familiar with her blade than he wanted to be. It was all he could do not to pull her into his arms and hold her there until his delight bubbled over into laughter she most certainly wouldn’t have appreciated.

Dangerous paths, indeed.

She nodded toward the market. “Let’s be off. I’ll buy you breakfast before you laugh yourself into a faint.”

He pushed away from the wall, then put his arm around her shoulders. “I’ll pay. If I have to watch you count your coins again, I’ll kill your brother for the vexation when we meet. By the way, how many did he steal?”

“Four hundred and ninety-three.”

“I hope they gave him a backache from having to carry them,” Ruith said with a snort. “We’ll eat, then go look at horses.”

She looked up at him in surprise. “For the company?”

“For you and me.”

“I can’t afford a horse.”

“Then I suppose I’ll have to leave you behind.”

He could hear the wheels grinding miserably inside her head. “I could earn—”

He squeezed her shoulders, then released her and took her hand. It was her right hand, so he held it very loosely. Better for her skin, necessary for his sanity. “I wasn’t serious, Sarah. ’Tis part of our bargain. You look for your brother, I see to inns and transportation.”

She was very quiet as she allowed him to weave a path through the market. He bought food, two very lovely, slim daggers that were engraved with runes he was certain were neither elvish nor of dwarf make, but rather something from some noble house or other. They had been fashioned to fit a woman’s hand and tuck down the sides of slim riding boots or perhaps down an over-ruffled blouse such as the one folded resentfully and left behind happily under Master Franciscus’s wagon seat. The sight of them made him smile, so he handed them to Sarah without comment and promised himself a better look at them when he had a chance.

He didn’t realize she hadn’t said anything at all until he was walking with her along a fairly wide road that led west, out of town toward where the horse breeders plied their trade. He looked at her to find her looking straight ahead with tears standing in her eyes. He stopped and stared at her in astonishment.

“What is it?”

She looked so devastated,
he
almost wept. Hard on the heels of that came the intense desire to turn and flee. He was not good with women who wept, the sum total of his experience with wailing females being limited to his younger sister’s very rare bouts of it. He hadn’t been her primary comforter—nor her primary tormentor, it should be noted—but he’d been passing fond of her and he’d never shunned her company. He’d seen her weep only when she’d truly injured herself, or when she’d been afraid. He’d never blamed her for either. She’d certainly had cause enough for the latter.

But a grown woman who wouldn’t even look at him as she stood there with her eyes closed and tears running down her cheeks?

Now,
that
was terrifying.

But he was nothing if not resourceful, so he turned her to him and drew her with rather less grace than he might have liked into his arms. She was not a willing weeper. Indeed, he wouldn’t have known she wept if he hadn’t felt his tunic growing damp and heard the occasional hiccup.

He murmured soothingly, punctuating that with the occasional curse lest she think he’d gone completely daft, and tried to decide what would achieve better results, patting her back or stroking her hair. He was afraid he had patted a bit too hard and encountered a few too many tangles and pulled rather too vigorously, but what did she expect? He was, as he would have readily admitted to any passerby who looked capable of rescuing him from his current predicament, not good at that sort of thing.

Sarah finally pulled away, laughing uneasily as she dragged her sleeve across her eyes. “Thank you.”

“Is it over?”

“I think so.”

“Then you’re welcome,” he said with feeling.

She looked up at him, her eyes very red, then she smiled and took his arm. “Let’s press on.”

He walked with her, feeling quite pathetically grateful she hadn’t completely fallen apart on him. But hard on the heels of that came the idea that he should ask her what was amiss.

“Sarah—”

“It was the daggers,” she said shortly, tugging on him and walking faster. “A very lovely gift.”

He knew that he should have dug a little harder to find out why such a gift would bother her so much, but he suspected he might not need to. For all he knew, she had never had anyone do anything nice for her.

“Where now?” she demanded.

“We’ll find horses, then decide,” he said, happy to discuss something a little less tender. “I left most of my gear with Franciscus, so we’ll need to go back and fetch it. Then we’ll be off to find your brother. I think we’ll manage more easily if we ride.”

“And what are we going to do once we find him?” she asked in a suddenly weary tone.

“You’ll hold him whilst I cut his entrails from him and hang him from the nearest tree with them.”

Her eyes widened briefly. “Savage.”

“Efficient.”

“I was talking about you, not your methods.”

He smiled in spite of himself. “I think I should be offended.”

“Flattered, rather,” she said. She looked at the knives she carried in one hand. “Thank you for these. Truly.”

“You’re welcome. Truly.”

She shook her head. “I’ll never manage to repay you, not for the horse, not for these.” She took a deep breath suddenly. “Which stable shall we visit?”

“At the end of the road. Hardest to get to, but worth the effort.”

“Have you been here before?” she asked in surprise.

“Aye,” he said, but he didn’t elaborate. He didn’t dare. He’d come with his father’s father when he’d been barely eight summers, just they two for a look to see if there might be decent horseflesh to be had. It had been a particularly marvelous journey, full of adventure and pretending to be a mere traveler along with his grandfather, who was famous for going about in homespun. He had never once dreamt that pantomime might become his life in truth.

He pulled himself away from that memory and looked at her seriously. “Can you choose horseflesh?”

“And ride too, if you can believe it. You can thank Master Franciscus for it, though. Those lessons gave me a reason to be out from under my mother’s ... scrutiny.”

“Stirring up insurrections in some farmer’s field, were you?”

“Something like that.”

Avoiding her mother’s rages was more likely, or so he suspected. He reached out and pulled her into his arms again before he thought better of it. He held her close and closed his eyes when he felt her arms steal around his waist.

“Come on, you wee feisty wench,” he said roughly. “I’ll buy you a horse.”

“I don’t need sympathy.”

“I’m not offering you sympathy,” he said, though he most certainly was. “I’m buying you a horse. We’ll see who is the better rider, and then the loser can spend the rest of the day polishing the victor’s tack.”

She pulled away and looked up at him. “Have you ever ridden a horse, Ruith?”

“I had one as a boy.” He’d had more than one, actually, waiting for him in a handful of locations. He didn’t bother to mention that whilst he was very fond of riding, he had been rather more fond of throwing himself off whatever steep inclines had been available and turning himself into something very fast with wings before he hit the ground. He pulled himself back to himself, then nodded toward the street. “Let’s see what’s available, then you’ll remind me what to do. I haven’t ridden in years.”

 

T
wo hours later, they were leaning their elbows on a horse fence and watching a selection of very fine stallions be worked in an arena.

“These are exceptional,” Sarah said very quietly.

Ruith nodded in agreement. “They are. I imagine they have Angesand blood in their veins.”

She looked at him with a frown. “But I thought the lords of Angesand never allowed their horses out of their care, and if they did, they required absolute guarantees that the beasts wouldn’t be bred.”

“All true, to my knowledge,” Ruith said, “save for one relatively obscure incident several centuries ago in which Alan of Gilean spirited away a particularly lovely Angesand mare from the king of Neroche’s summer palace at Chagailt. He bred her several times and produced himself a very fine living. Briefly.”

She leaned against the fence. “What happened to him?”

“Treun of Angesand hunted him down, pulled out his entrails, and hanged him with them in his own barn.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Savage, isn’t it?”

She laughed a little at him. “You’re not very original, are you?”

“I’m just entertaining you for the sport of it.”

“Then ’tis verywell-done. I’ll be even more impressed if you can talk that man over there out of a pair of horses and have any gold left over.”

“What, these lame nags here?” Ruith said dismissively. “Look you at those strange and ungainly growths on their hooves.”

She leaned close. “I think they’re wings.”

“I’ll look for other flaws, then.”

“Best of luck with that.” She looked at him sideways. “How is it you know so many things?”

“I have an extensive library at home,” he said, “with tomes full of gossip and speculation.”

She said no more, but she did smile more easily and she did indeed have a way with horses. He paid a fair price for two very fine nags with what he wasn’t entirely sure weren’t wings on their hooves. He gave Sarah a leg up, then swung up into his own saddle with as much grace as he could muster—which wasn’t much, given the day he’d had so far—and turned with her back toward town.

The road was fairly empty, but he supposed that didn’t matter. He had no intention of sampling his horse’s canter at the moment anyway, given the fair likelihood of his falling off upon his arse. So he remained at a walk, listened to the wind in the branches of trees thinking about breaking forth into buds, and contemplated the great pleasure of riding next to a woman who seemed content to enjoy the same.

He nodded at souls that they passed, not paying them much heed past avoiding trampling on them.

And then he froze. He hardly dared look behind him but he was fairly sure he recognized the two men he had just passed. Sarah looked at him, then back over her shoulder. She frowned.

“Ruith, those lads are coming back toward us.”

“Fly,” he said without hesitation.

She did, and so did he. He didn’t look back, and he heard no shouts or calls to stop and explain why he was where he was when he was supposed to be dead. He drew his hood over his face, but the wind had other ideas.

He supposed the lads he’d passed would think they had perhaps been overtired, or overfed, or over-aled and imagined what they’d seen. Surely they wouldn’t rush back to Lake Cladach and tell their employers whom they thought they’d seen.

Surely.

He hazarded a glance behind him but saw nothing. His secrets were still safe and he wouldn’t soon find himself hunted down so he could explain things he wasn’t ready to.

At least not yet.

“You’re losing!” Sarah called over her shoulder.

Aye, more than just the race. His sanity, his peace, his heart ...

The list was very long, indeed.