Valor of the Healer (17 page)

They kept to the hills until they reached the village’s far side, where a dense barrier of trees hid a rutted road. Breaths of wind and the occasional coos of pigeons somewhere ahead played counterpoint to the beats of the horses’ hooves, and along with the fading sunlight cast a surreal air over their path. Fragrances of wildflowers and overgrown patches of herbs rushed together with less pleasant aromas of rotting wood and rusting metal, thickening the air as Rab led them in along the trail toward a ramshackle cottage. At the edge of the trees they dismounted, and on foot they continued, walking the horses between them.

Made unearthly by sunset’s growing shadows, such a collection of detritus littered the open ground before the dwelling that it was as though some passing storm had upended the nearby village and dumped it at random into this single clearing. The pieces of a shattered cart made a pile with the rusting remains of the harness for the horse that once pulled it. Fraying garments hung on a rope strung between a pair of wooden poles. A dilapidated trunk that looked as if it had collided with a mountain tilted against the cracked shell of a water barrel, and two haphazard towers, one of old bricks and the other of broken carriage wheels, stood sentinel to the house itself. Julian knew none of the specific objects, but the hoard of forgotten fragments of half a score of lives was familiar. He and Rab had learned long ago that if someone had discarded it, chances were high that Aenghis Peddersen had taken it in.

“Behind me,” he told Faanshi, while Rab pressed against the side of the dwelling, directly beside the door. “Aenghis is...temperamental.”

As the girl edged around behind him, he wrapped his fingers around the hilt of one of his daggers, then raised his false hand and rapped three times against the house’s scarred and weathered door. “Aenghis! Open up!”

Something struck the door’s inner side, rattling the sturdy wood with its impact. “Off with you!” a voice roared from within. “No rags, no bones this close to sunset!”

“We’re not here with rags or bones,” Julian called. “It’s a different treasure we’ve brought you.”

There was a pause. Then, “Rook? That you?”

“In the flesh. Open the door, Aenghis. Let us in.”

Silence fell beyond the door for a moment, before the noise of wood sliding against wood signaled a bar lifting free from its place. “You open the door,” came back the challenge.

Rab shot Julian an inquiring look. Julian nodded once and glanced at Faanshi behind him. “When he opens the door, duck,” he ordered. With enough force to waggle her cap, Faanshi bobbed her head. Satisfied, he gave another curt nod, and Rab hauled open the door.

Julian was already crouching when the musket fired. So was Faanshi, so the ball flew harmlessly over the both of them. “He’s also nearsighted,” he muttered to the girl. She didn’t look assured.

A spate of curses sounded as Rab seized the old man edging forward with his musket through the door. Aenghis had never been large, even when young. Now, though, he thrashed with a surprising strength in the assassin’s hold. Only with difficulty did Rab keep a dagger at his throat long enough for Julian to snatch the musket out of Aenghis’s hands. And only then did Aenghis go limp in Rab’s grasp, his seamed features crinkling in recognition and dismay.

“Aw now, you didn’t have to go and do that,” he protested weakly.

“Nor do you have to keep greeting old friends quite so vociferously.” Julian gestured at Rab to release his captive. “But you’ve yet to take our advice on that score.”

The old man straightened as Rab let him go, rubbed his arms and squinted at the two assassins. He was much the same as he’d been most times they’d crossed paths. His face was almost lost between his wild white hair and beard, and he was clad in the remnants of a uniform of a sergeant of the Adalonian army. Like his dwelling and the clearing around it, he bore an almost tangible aroma: a smell of rancid animal fat, of meat beginning to turn. Julian paid it no mind, and Rab didn’t bat an eye. They’d both smelled of worse before.

“Humph. Old ears and old eyes like mine, and he expects me to trust a voice before I can see his owner,” Aenghis said with a derisive snort. Then all at once he sniggered. “And where else is a codger like me going to get his fun?”

Julian grinned. “And we’ve brought a bit more fun tonight, old friend, something for which we need those birds of yours.”

“What’s that, then?” Aenghis’s bushy brows drew in over his nose, and beneath them his eyes glinted, alert and curious.

Julian took a step to his right, revealing the girl behind him.

“
Eshallavan
,
akreshi
Aenghis.” She stood at her full height, nervous-eyed yet strangely graceful despite her ragtag clothing and the crumpled bundle she bore. As she pressed her palms together at her breast and inclined her head, a thunderstruck expression swept across the old man’s face.

“Oh,” he breathed. “Oh my.”

* * *

“Aenghis is a rag-and-bone man,” Julian told Faanshi once they’d settled inside the cottage, at a table as weathered as their host. Her awestruck gaze had drunk in the countless odds and ends that filled the house from wall to wall. Pottery, pieces of furniture in various states of disrepair, and even weaponry—anything that needed to be sheltered from the elements—were all crowded together under Aenghis’s roof. “He collects things that people cast away, and saves what he can to sell to make his living.”

“Rags and rust, bones that bust, it all comes to me in the end.” Aenghis chortled, deftly untying Faanshi’s bundle to see what lay within the sari’s folds.

With the evidence of the slavery she was fleeing spread out on the table before them all, the girl looked visibly disconcerted. But she peered at the old man, venturing, “I didn’t know such men existed.”

“Our little dove’s been sheltered.” Rab had claimed the one chair in the cottage with enough empty wall behind it to let him lean back as he sat. He cycled his attention between the others and the door, and all the while twirled a blade through his fingers. “You might say we’re helping her come out, though we’re having a devil of a time teaching her to dance.”

Aenghis’s hands stilled as he found the bloodstains at the bundle’s center. With a low whistle, he held them up to the light. “I don’t know, Rab me lad, looks like she’s done a jig and a half already.”

“Can you get the blood out of the cloth?” Julian asked. “We couldn’t afford to leave it where it could be found. And where we need to go, we can’t take it with us.”

“Hah. Blood is easy. I’ve just the thing to soak it right out with none the wiser, and I’ll get this cut up for rags and spread across three villages before the week is out. You lads want hard, try getting rid of the stink of turned pig fat.” He ducked his grizzled head down to sniff at himself, grimaced and finally shot Faanshi a gimlet stare. “Who’d you kill, girlie? Can’t be your blood, this.”

Horror welled across Faanshi’s face as the blunt demand struck her speechless.

“Rab struck the blow, not her,” Julian said, less oblivious to her distress than he liked. “The Hawk was still alive when we left him.”

“Not for my lack of trying, I assure you,” Rab said.

Sitting with a hard thump on the three-legged stool behind him, Aenghis blinked at them. “You lot were damned fool enough to take on a Hawk?”

“He was between us and our objective.” Rab’s dagger stopped its twirling, its tip and his gaze alike snapping in Faanshi’s direction. “It wasn’t the time for an amiable chat.”

The old man’s attention swung back to the girl. “What’re you, then, that the Order’s...” He leaned in closer, and Faanshi swept up alarmed hands to keep her hat upon her head—but one clear glimpse beneath its brim was all Aenghis needed, and he edged back without touching her, expression distant. “Never mind, my sight’s getting worse every year. Tantiu and elf blood both? That’s a new one. What kind of magic?”

“I’m a healer,
akreshi
.”

“And the most powerful I’ve ever seen. She saved my life.” Before Rab could make any further sardonic remarks, Julian shot him a quelling look. “As well as the life of the Hawk, but it couldn’t be helped. She can’t control her magic.”

“Won’t stop the Hawks coming after her,” Aenghis said.

“And us,” Rab said.

Grimacing, Julian rubbed his hand across his eye. Lack of sleep pulled at his limbs now that he was finally sitting down after the day’s long travel. But no rest was in sight, not yet. “No. That’s why we must get her to the elves.”

Aenghis shifted on the stool, tugging the sari back and forth through his hands. Then he leaped up and began to rummage through the cottage, trailing the stained cloth after him. “My birds,” he said, cackling. “You want me to send a bird out to them. One of my pigeons to do a Rook’s work.”

“Just long enough to keep Hawks’ eyes off this dove,” Julian said. “Name your price. You know I’m good for it.”

“What good’s gold or stones for the likes of me? Who’d take a ruby from a rag-and-bone man?”

“Please—”

The soft syllable made them all start. Faanshi had lifted her head, and her face beneath the too-large cap looked vulnerable, every bit as exhausted as Julian felt. But her face was resolute, and though her voice was tired, it didn’t waver.

“Please,
akreshi
Aenghis, these men have ridden with and watched over me for many hours. If you could let them have food and a place to sleep, I’ll gladly do whatever work you require.”

Rab was too urbane to gape, but his brows rose over his startled eyes at the sound of Faanshi speaking up on their behalf.

Aenghis squinted harder at the girl, cocking his head. “Wisp of a thing like you? What can you do for me, huh?”

“I’m small,
akreshi
, but before my master locked me away, I worked hard in the kitchens and the stables of his Hall. I can cook food and mend lace, clean and carry. It’s not much. But I offer it.”

“Faanshi—” The name burst out of Julian in irritation, and only then did he realize he’d uttered it for the first time. Her gaze clouded at his tone; reluctantly, he moderated it. “I told you I wouldn’t make you a slave.”

“Surely it doesn’t count as slave work if it’s work I freely offer? Please allow me to help. You and Rab know how to fight and hide...” Faanshi paused, her mouth curving into a rueful smile. “I know how to clean things.”

“Can you clean this stink off me?” Aenghis demanded, stumping back over and thrusting his hand into the girl’s face. “I’ve bloody well washed all day, and I’m almost out of soap.”

Her eyes watered, but she didn’t look away. “I saw soapwort and mint as we came to this house. I could gather some and prepare it. It could help.”

The old man blinked several times, rocking back on his heels. Faanshi’s sari dangled forgotten from his fingers, the long expanse of silk pooling around his feet. “Oh. Had a garden once, years back. Damned if I remember what’s in it.” Sidelong to Julian, he added, “The girlie really knows these things?”

“If she says she does, she does.”

“Humph. I suppose you lot can stay the night. And you, girlie, make yourself useful tomorrow and go find those herbs you talked about.” Aenghis waggled the sari at her. “I want this washed out so I can use it, and then I have to figure out what in the gods’ names I can feed you.”

“I’ll do so at dawn,
akreshi
,” Faanshi said. “You honor us, and I thank you.”

Her face had changed again, Julian mused. It was nothing so overt as her shortened hair or her change of clothes, little more than an easing of her features and a brightening of her eyes. Yet it held his gaze nonetheless, making him wonder what had happened to the veiled, broken creature he’d stolen from the Camden church. He could see her still, lurking in the tension at the corners of her eyes and in the set of her frame, but that girl seemed faded now. This was a different Faanshi, the braver one he’d glimpsed in a hayloft’s darkness. And despite his resolve to banish it, his sympathy came stealing back. This Faanshi seemed the truer one, venturing forth as her freedom took hold.

With a strength that disturbed him, he found himself hoping she would stay.

Chapter Fourteen

One for the Dawnmaiden, one for the Noonmother, one for the Crone of Night. Three sunsets since Faanshi’s escape, three sunsets to distance her from the man who thought himself her master. The tally pleased Ulima. Three was a number sacred to Djashtet, and thus this night was a fitting one in which to give thanks for Faanshi’s freedom. But she knew better than to pray aloud, even in the privacy of her rooms. Faanshi’s flight had roused His Grace’s ire. Like any great beast he’d roar out his might and use all his strength to reclaim that which he had lost. And though her young kinswoman had escaped its walls, Lomhannor Hall remained a prison for Ulima, Holvirr Kilmerredes her jailer.

As she lit her altar candles he came to her door, leaning against the frame and crossing his arms along his chest. “How comforting it is to see the power of prayer invoked in these troubled days. What will you say to your heathen goddess tonight?”

“The same words I’ve spoken to Her for two nights running, my lord.” Once she’d been troubled by his disdain for the Djashtethi faith, for he’d led the way for almost all her people who’d joined his household to abandon the Lady of Time in favor of the Four Gods. But she’d learned to set that aside, even if it seemed sometimes that she was the only faithful Tantiu left at Lomhannor Hall. That, as much as anything else, had driven her to teach Faanshi to share her beliefs. And she didn’t let the duke distract her now from lighting the sage and sandalwood incense at the feet of the statue on the altar, or kneeling upon the velvet cushion she kept on the floor. “A call for justice, the preservation of life and the soul of my niece’s daughter.”

“She’s casteless.” His heavy tread brought him farther into the room, and his voice carried an edge beneath his otherwise friendly tone. “I didn’t think the casteless merited the attention of prayers.”

“I pray for all who merit it, Your Grace.” Ulima clasped her hands at her breast and closed her eyes. All her other senses focused upon the duke. With her back turned, he could easily thrust a dagger between her shoulder blades. But he wouldn’t, not tonight. She’d had no vision, but the knowledge filled her nevertheless. “Sometimes I even pray for you.”

“I’m flattered. I had no idea you held me in such high regard.”

“You’ve wed into my clan. I pray for all who are kin to Clan Sarazen, by blood and bond of marriage.”

“Whether they’re noblemen or casteless slave girls? How egalitarian of you.”

“Almighty Djashtet commands us in Her
ridahs
to show compassion to all. Especially to those of lesser station in life.”

Holvirr paced in a semicircle behind her, the edge in his voice growing sharper. “Does She also command you to work against your acknowledged lord?”

Ah
,
now
the
swords
are
unsheathed
. “That would be an act of treachery,” Ulima observed primly, “and therefore forbidden by the
ridahs
.”

“Truth is one of your
ridahs
,” growled the duke.

“That is so. What truth do you seek,
akreshi
?”

“Did you send word of the girl to the Hawks?”

The words lashed, whiplike, reminding her of the wounds she’d seen on Faanshi’s limbs before the girl’s magic had healed them. Ulima drew in a steadying breath, grasping those recollections like weapons within her mind, and lifted her dark gaze at last. “I did.”

His face flushed scarlet, just enough warning for her to act. From beneath her sari’s folds she whipped forth a dagger, snapping it up into the path of Kilmerredes’s descending hand. It threw him back a few paces, forcing him to pull his blow before he sliced open his own arm. “I should kill you right now,” he snarled. “How
dare
you defy—”

“Defy what, my lord? The laws of this land? The treaty between our peoples? They both command that mages be given to your Hawks, and I’ve done exactly that.”

“Don’t try to wield our laws as your weapons,” Kilmerredes warned. “You may find that they turn in your very hand.”

“You know as well as I that the amulets of the Hawks have no interest in me.”

“Indeed. But we have many other laws. And I swear to you that I’ll find one to consign you to a slave compound for the rest of your days if you defy me again. Pray to your goddess about that,
akresha
, if you need a subject for your devotions.”

He turned and stalked for the door, wasting no breath on a parting pleasantry neither of them would have believed. Only when her chamber door closed did Ulima return her dagger to the sheath beneath her sari, silently begging the Lady of Time for strength and vigilance.

Holvirr Kilmerredes wouldn’t kill her tonight.

But there were many more nights to come.

* * *

Aenghis Peddersen had probably fed them, and Faanshi knew she’d made it back out to the patch of wild herbs so that she could pick the mint and the soapwort, along with rosemary and parsley. She was also fairly certain she’d prepared it properly, grinding the herbs and mixing them with salt and water for Aenghis’s use. Yet Faanshi never after recalled what else they did before retiring for the night. She ached from too many hours of unaccustomed riding, and her chest throbbed with ongoing phantom pain. Neither gained relief from her wayward magic. Fractured golden shards of it jabbed at her awareness each time she tried to winnow her own true senses out of the dual storm of perceptions flooding her thoughts.

Her sleep was scattered, her dreams shot through with seemingly endless riding on a horse that changed shape and color along with her. The beast carried her at frantic speed away from a searing blaze of light, only to be engulfed when the radiance flared out to consume them both—and then, it hurled her back into her cellar at Lomhannor Hall. All light died, swallowed by shadow, as the duke’s hand with its riding crop lashed toward her.

She flung herself at him, thinking to grab the striking arm before it could deliver its blow. But her body felt wrong, its height and swiftness too new, too strange; her master caught her without effort, and his hand around her neck choked off her air.

You
heal
on
my
command
!

When the dawn woke her, it wrenched a breathless shriek of alarm from her throat and drove her hands in search of weapons she didn’t actually bear. Then the quality of the light on her face fully roused her, and with wondering eyes, she took in the room she didn’t know.

Like the rest of the house, it was crowded and cluttered. Books with tattered covers competed for space with misshapen fragments of pottery on lopsided shelves. A wardrobe with a missing door stood in the corner, overflowing with old clothing, some hanging on hooks within and some spilling out in puddles of stained and faded cloth on the floor. Mismatched shoes, damaged by water and mud and wear, claimed another corner. Stirred up by her motion and making her sneeze, dust motes hung in the dappled light from the strangest window she had ever seen. It was square, but made up of panes of differing sizes. The largest held glass, thick and warped and giving her only a blurred glimpse of what lay outside. Pieces of mirrors and colored paper filled the rest. Little drafts wafted through cracks in the mirror fragments and the places where paper and glass didn’t quite join up with the surrounding wood.

Faanshi approached it, lifting her fingers to brush them across the big pane of glass. Not a rich man’s window; it wouldn’t have been a window in Lomhannor Hall. But it made do, and oddly, she liked it. It kept her from a proper view of the sun’s ascent, yet it was itself adorned with sunrise colors. Perhaps Djashtet Herself would approve.

She lingered there and leaned her head forward against the papered glass, for only when her eyes were closed could she withstand the feel of being two heights at once. Whether she could chant the
ridahs
to the Lady of Time with Kestar’s voice thrumming in her throat she couldn’t tell, and her prayers were therefore silent. If Djashtet heard them, She gave no answer that she could hear; the light-dappled peace of the room had to be answer enough.

The rag-and-bone man found her there.

“You know, girlie,” he announced from the doorway, “you don’t have to stay cooped up in here all day.”

His voice nearly made her jump out of her oversized boots, and she whirled around, embarrassed to admit that part of her had thought exactly that. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else I might do.”

“Hah. Ain’t that just like those two, haul a girlie off to the elves and leave her at loose ends on the way.” Aenghis beckoned her. “I don’t know what you’re used to where you come from, but put it out of your head. Promised Richard I’d stash you—hah! I could hide five girlies in this house of mine—but you’re not a prisoner here.”

He waggled a peremptory finger at her, and Faanshi couldn’t help but smile a little. He was like his window, it seemed, patched together from pieces but making do. “Yes,” she said, though her brow furrowed at the unfamiliar name. “But wait,
akreshi
, who is—”

“Richard? The Rook, of course. He’s got as many names as you or I have fingers. Richard’s the one he uses in Kilmerry. Which one did he give you?”

“Julian,” Faanshi said.

“Did he now? Humph.” On this, though, the old man didn’t elaborate. Instead he turned and stumped away, calling as he went, “So come on then. There’s something else you can help me with, since the first thing went so well.”

Scents of mint and rosemary reached her as she hastened after him. The herbal smells didn’t entirely hide the odor of turned meat that had clung to him the night before, but they had lessened it a great deal. “The paste worked,” she said, pleased.

Aenghis snorted as he led her to a rickety staircase at the end of the corridor. “Aye, I can stand to smell myself for the first time in a week. That’s why you get to see this.”

Curious, and marveling all the while at the feeling of curiosity’s indulgence, Faanshi followed him up the stairs. They opened out into the cottage’s attic, and there she found the true wonder of the house: a row of cages along one side of the sloping roof, filled with the fluttering shapes of birds. Soft cooing noises and the smells of straw and feed filled the entire space, as though it were a kind of stable...though she’d never heard of a stable inside a house.

“Messenger pigeons.” Aenghis cracked a grin at her gasp of astonishment. “Used them in the war, back when I was as young as the Rook, fighting against boys who looked a lot like you. Still use them sometimes, when the time is right, since that damned war put me off the Church and all it stands for.” He reached into one cage, the only one of the five without a door, and withdrew its occupant. The slender gray-feathered bird hopped onto his hand and raised its head in expectation.

“It doesn’t look like the others,” Faanshi observed, peeking into the other cages, and then at the chosen bird.

“Not a bit.” The rag-and-bone man scratched the creature gently along the top of its head, then nodded for the girl to step closer. “This one was bred by the elves.”

Drawing in her breath, Faanshi inched nearer. The bird cocked its head, its bearing peaceful but alert. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered.

“And smart. Don’t have to lock her up like I do the others. Takes badly to that.” Aenghis slid a speculative look toward her. “I expect you know something of that, girlie. Here.” With that he took her hand and drew it up to the bird perched upon his fingers. “Step,” he ordered it. It jumped from his hand to hers, and to Faanshi he added, “Hold your hand still. Just let her perch while I get the message on her leg.”

Faanshi nodded, staring at the bird while its master fished into the pocket of his grubby breeches. She didn’t want to look away from the pigeon, but the objects Aenghis produced—a miniscule roll of paper and a leathern tube scarcely the length and breadth of his thumb—caught her eye. “What will the message say to the elves?”

The rag-and-bone man snickered and unraveled the paper partway so that she could glimpse the characters written upon it, tiny, graceful letters she didn’t recognize. “Damned if I know. I barely read Adalonic, much less Elvish. Safer that way. Anybody finds out I sent it, can’t question me on it.”

“But you have so many books in the house.”

“Aye, and I can’t read most of them, either. I take what I find and sell what I can. Maybe someday I’ll learn to read the ones I keep.” Aenghis seemed unruffled, and with adroit motions rolled the paper up, slipped it into the tube and tied it to the bird’s leg. “There. Take her to the window and give her a toss up into the air. She’ll know what to do.”

To be trusted with the task filled Faanshi with pride, yet to have even fleeting command over a creature smaller and more vulnerable than she was added trepidation. Certain that her slightest misstep would dislodge the bird from her hand, barely raising either foot from the rough floorboards, she crept to the open window. Nothing blocked her view of the detritus around the house, or of the trees beyond. There was only the window’s frame, squared off with the same planking that made up the floor, and worn smooth in the very place she laid her free hand for support. Most likely by the hands of the rag-and-bone man.

The pigeon watched Faanshi as she paused. It did indeed seem to know its purpose, and she envied that. “Djashtet go with you,” she murmured, tossing it out the window and into the air. It fluttered, dropped and then, with determined beats of its wings, climbed skyward. She watched it until it grew no larger than a speck against the morning clouds. So did Aenghis, shuffling up to stand beside her, and she glanced up at him when the bird vanished from view. “Which of the other men wrote the message, if not you,
akreshi
?”

He cocked his eyebrows. “Which do you think, girlie? The Rook can do a lot of things, but writing Elvish runes on a piece of paper that small, one-handed, ain’t one of them.”

“Oh.” Faanshi’s face fell.

“Not too eager to ask young Rab about it, I take it.”