Steadfast

TITLES BY MERCEDES LACKEY

available from DAW Books:

THE NOVELS OF VALDEMAR:

THE HERALDS OF VALDEMAR

ARROWS OF THE QUEEN

ARROW’S FLIGHT

ARROW’S FALL

THE LAST HERALD-MAGE

MAGIC’S PAWN

MAGIC’S PROMISE

MAGIC’S PRICE

THE MAGE WINDS

WINDS OF FATE

WINDS OF CHANGE

WINDS OF FURY

THE MAGE STORMS

STORM WARNING

STORM RISING

STORM BREAKING

VOWS AND HONOR

THE OATHBOUND

OATHBREAKERS

OATHBLOOD

THE COLLEGIUM CHRONICLES

FOUNDATION

INTRIGUES

CHANGES

REDOUBT

BASTION*

BY THE SWORD

BRIGHTLY BURNING

TAKE A THIEF

EXILE’S HONOR

EXILE’S VALOR

VALDEMAR ANTHOLOGIES:

SWORD OF ICE

SUN IN GLORY

CROSSROADS

MOVING TARGETS

CHANGING THE WORLD

FINDING THE WAY

UNDER THE VALE

Written with
LARRY DIXON:

THE MAGE WARS

THE BLACK GRYPHON

THE WHITE GRYPHON

THE SILVER GRYPHON

DARIAN’S TALE

OWLFLIGHT

OWLSIGHT

OWLKNIGHT

OTHER NOVELS:

GWENHWYFAR

THE BLACK SWAN

THE DRAGON JOUSTERS

JOUST

ALTA

SANCTUARY

AERIE

THE ELEMENTAL MASTERS

THE SERPENT’S SHADOW

THE GATES OF SLEEP

PHOENIX AND ASHES

THE WIZARD OF LONDON

RESERVED FOR THE CAT

UNNATURAL ISSUE

HOME FROM THE SEA

STEADFAST

ELEMENTAL MAGIC

(All-New Tales of the Elemental Masters)

*Coming soon from DAW Books

And don’t miss THE VALDEMAR COMPANION edited by John Helfers and Denise Little

STEADFAST

The Elemental Masters, Book Eight

MERCEDES LACKEY

Copyright © 2013 by Mercedes Lackey

All Rights Reserved.

Jacket art by Jody A. Lee.

Jacket designed by G-Force Design.

DAW Book Collectors No. 1623.

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

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—MARCA REGISTRADA

HECHO EN U.S.A.

PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

To the programmers and developers of the late Paragon Studios, and the memory of City
of Heroes, my second home.

1

K
ATIE Langford woke with a start, heart pounding, the sweat of terror soaking her clothing.
It took her a moment of paralyzed fear to realize that she was
not
in the circus wagon, she was
not
about to be beaten by her husband again, and at least for this moment she was safe.
Safe, sleeping on a sort of shelf-bed in old Mary Small’s
vardo,
protected by the menfolk sleeping outside. She could hear their snores from underneath
her, sheltered by the great Traveler wagon, and from the bender tents around the wagon.

She took slow, careful breaths as her heart quieted, and she felt her emotions fall
back into the curious state of numb apprehension that she couldn’t seem to work her
way out of. She wondered if she would ever feel normal again—or happy?

Probably not until I know that Dick is dead.

She listened to the snores. Mary Small had outlived her husband, but her sons and
grandsons were many, and since Mary had declared that the half-blooded Katie was to
be sheltered and protected, her sons would see to it that their mother’s word was
followed.

This was . . . interesting. Her mother might have married a
gadjo,
she might be
didicoy,
and Katie herself might know no more than a few words of the Traveler tongue, but
still, it seemed that for Mary Small, blood was blood.

Perhaps it was something more than that, for Mary had declared she was
drabarni
, she had magic, and so she was to be doubly protected.

Katie could not for a moment imagine where Mary had gotten
that
idea. Magic? The only magic she had ever seen was sleight of hand and outright fraud.
Her mother had told her stories of magic . . . but if Katie’d had anything like what
had been in those stories . . .

My parents would be alive,
she thought, and swallowed down tears.
If I’d had that sort of magic, they would be alive.

It was dark in the wagon. The communal fire outside had been allowed to die down to
banked coals, there was no moon, and they were far from a town. It was quiet, too;
Mary Small was a tiny woman in robust health, and slept as quietly as a babe.

Katie breathed slowly and carefully in the spice-redolent darkness of the
vardo,
waiting for the tears to pass, the numbness to settle in again. It was only three
days ago she had taken everything portable she had of value and fled the circus—but
it seemed an entire lifetime ago. She still could hardly believe that she’d had the
temerity.
That
Katie, who’d resolutely taken everything that was due her and run, seemed a stranger
to her. After months of being married to Dick, she had turned into a terrified mouse
of a creature, afraid to put a single finger wrong. Where had that courage come from?
She still didn’t know . . . but it hadn’t lasted for more than the few hours it took
to put some distance between her and the circus.

Once it had run out, then she’d settled into the state of dull anxiety she lived in
now. But she had kept going, understanding that after having run, being caught would
be—a horror. She didn’t dare even think about what Dick would do to her if he caught
her.

It had been only a day since she had stumbled on the Traveler encampment—literally
ran right into it, since the
vardos
of the Small clan were Bow Tops, painted to blend in with the woodland rather than
stand out like the bright red and gold Reading
vardos.
The entire two days before, she had been running, mostly along country lanes and
paths through forest, changing her direction at random. Her husband Dick—and more
especially, Andy Ball, the owner of Ball’s Circus—would most likely assume she would
head for one of the nearest towns rather than take to the countryside. They didn’t
know her at all, nor had they ever made any effort to know her. They would assume
she was like the other women of the circus, who knew only the wagons, the tents, and
the towns.

Dick would be furious, not only because she, his possession, had dared to run from
him, but because she had picked the lock on his strongbox and taken every bit of the
money
she
had earned. Or at least, every bit that was left after his drinking; she took only
what should have been her salary, and there was still money left in the strongbox
when she closed it again.

It was not as if he actually needed her money. The truth was, he generally didn’t
have to pay for drinks, though he was quite a heavy drinker. Locals in the pubs would
buy him rounds just to see his tricks, like unbending and rebending a horseshoe, or
tying an iron bar into a knot. He didn’t have to pay for whores, either, with farmer’s
lasses throwing themselves at him.

She wouldn’t have cared about that. She
didn’t
care about that. She’d only married him because he’d been craftily kind to her after
the horrible fire that killed her parents, and because Andy Ball said she had to marry
a strong man to protect her now, and who was stronger than the Strong Man himself?
She’d been so paralyzed with grief, mind fogged, so alone . . . Andy had been so insistent . . .
it had seemed logical. Most marriages among circus folks were arranged, anyway—an
acrobat daughter sent into a family of ropewalkers, or off to learn trapeze work.
So she’d gone along with it, and found herself married to a man who at first was impatient
with nearly everything she did, then increasingly angry with her, then who knocked
her around whenever something displeased him.

Of course, it hadn’t been bad at first. A slap here, a push there—circus folk were
not always the kindest to each other and plenty of husbands and wives left marks on
each other after fights. Circus folk drank, and there were often fights.

She’d gone in despair to Andy Ball, who had shrugged, and said “Then take pains to
please him, he’s your husband, you must do as he says. I told him if he broke your
bones, he’d be answering to me, so stop your whingeing.” And for the longest time,
she had believed that it
was
her fault. After all, her mother and father had never done more than shout at each
other. And none of the other circus wives were ever treated as she was. She’d been
too ashamed to talk to any of the other women about it, especially when he began to
really beat her.

Why had Andy urged the marriage on her? Because Dick wanted her and he was handing
her over like some reward for loyalty? Because he was afraid to lose his chief dancer
and contortionist?

She’d been part of a three-man acrobatic act; her mother, her father, and herself.
It had been like that for as long as she had been alive. With her family gone, besides
her dancing in the circus ballet, and her contortions in the sideshow, Andy had come
up with a new act for her. She became part of Dick’s strongman act, with tricks like
standing on her hands while balanced on Dick’s palm, and shivering the whole time,
afraid he’d drop her. She would have liked to join some other act, but Dick forbade
it. “You’ll work with me or no one,” he said, in that tone of voice that made her
shake and imagine that
no one
meant he’d strangle her in her sleep.

It was only when she’d been bathing in a stream—she usually did that alone, to hide
the bruises—and some of the other women had come on her unexpectedly that she had
finally been forced to confront the truth. They’d been alarmed, then angry, then—afraid.
Because while, one and all, they told her that
this wasn’t right,
they also told her she would have to somehow get away on her own. No one dared challenge
Dick. He could snap any other man’s neck without thinking about it.

At least their words had snapped her out of the fugue of despair and fear, and gave
her the courage and the strength to run. The opportunity had come when a lot of rich
men had descended on Dick and plied him with drink far stronger than he was used to.
He’d been so dead drunk that nothing would have awakened him, giving her plenty of
time to pack up all her belongings, steal the money, and get a good head start on
him. As a child she’d been a woods-runner, and in summer, her parents had often spent
entire weeks camped out, hidden, on someone’s private land, living off it. Unlike
Dick, she didn’t need a town to survive. But she was counting on the idea that he
would think she did.

It had been while she was following a path through the woods on some lord’s enormous
estate that she had stumbled on the Travelers. The old woman had started with surprise
as she appeared in their midst. She’d snapped out a few commands from the porch of
her
vardo
in the Traveler tongue, and one of the young men had seized Katie’s wrist before
she could run.

“Don’t be afraid,” he’d told her, in a lightly accented, warm voice that caressed
like velvet.
“Puri daj
has seen you are of the blood. She says you are
drabarni,
and that you are afraid and running. We will hide you.”

The accent, and the words, straight out of her childhood, when her mother had whispered
Traveler words to her, had somehow stolen her fear away—and besides, at that point
she was exhausted and starving. Cress, a few berries, and mushrooms she had gathered
had not done much for her hunger. The old woman had directed that she be brought to
the fire, given an enormous bowl of rabbit stew, and draped with a warm shawl. She’d
fallen asleep where she was when the bowl was empty. They’d woken her enough to guide
her into the
vardo,
where she’d fallen asleep on a little pallet on the floor. When night fell, one of
the women had awakened her and pulled down this shelf-bed, which she had climbed into
to fall asleep immediately again. It was narrow and short, and must have been intended
for a child, but she was small and it fit her.

Today she’d been given things to do—mending Mary Small’s clothing, since the old woman’s
eyes were too dim to thread a needle now—and wash pots and dishes, freeing another
of the women to go out and forage in the forest. The men went out and came back with
food and word that the circus folk had passed through the village, asked if anyone
had seen a girl like her, and moved on without stopping to set up.

“They’re in Aleford,” one of the boys, last in, had reported. “Set up there. Moving
on in the morning.” He had eyed her, then. “What did you do, that made you run?”

“My husband beat me,” she had told him, the first time she had told anyone but Andy
Ball, the shameful words surprised out of her. He had told her never to tell. He had
told her she deserved it. Even now, it was almost easier to believe he was right,
he’d said it so often.

“Ah,” the boy had said, and spat to the side. “A curse on a bully that strikes a woman,
unless with wanton ways or shrewish tongue she drives him to it.”

“The
drabarni
is neither wanton nor shrew,” Mary had proclaimed from the porch of the
vardo,
though how on earth she could know anything about Katie . . .

Her words settled things, it seemed, for the boy spat to the side again and repeated
his curse, without the conditions this time.

“What is it you do with the circus?” someone else asked. So far none of them but Mary
had told her their names, but it was one of the four other women in this clan.

To answer that, she showed them, bending over backward and grabbing her ankles with
her hands, straightening up again and going into a series of cartwheels so fast that
her skirts never dropped to show her legs at all. “And I dance,” she had added simply
as she finished back where she had started and clasped her hands in front of her.

“Good,” Mary had nodded. “Then you can do that while the boys play music. And we will
teach you your mother’s dances. You have the Gitano look about you and we are Gitano.
Now it is time to eat.”

And now she was spending her second night under the canvas top of Mary’s
vardo,
which seemed to be the place they had decided she was to stay. At this point she
was content to do what they told her to. It wasn’t only her body that was exhausted,
it was her mind.

A rumble of thunder in the distance suggested what it was that had woken her; a moment
later a gentle rain pattered down on the canvas top of the
vardo.
There was a curtain she could use to draw across the front of her shelf, and she
did so. A moment later three of the boys came up the stairs, their bedrolls over their
shoulders. They squeezed themselves together on the floor, and before she would have
believed it possible, they were asleep again, on their sides, arranged like spoons
in a drawer.

And the rain lulled Katie back to sleep, secure in the presence of her protectors
beyond the gently waving curtain.

•   •   •

Everyone said this was going to be the “perfect summer.” April had been unseasonably
warm. So was May. It was now June, and quite beyond “unseasonably warm”—in Lionel
Hawkins’ estimation, though he would never use such language in the presence of a
lady, it was bloody damned hot.