Stonewiser (14 page)

She put an end to that quickly. “I'm Sariah. Who might you be?”

The woman's grip was harsh like the snatch of a hang rope. “I'm the Lady Eda, the forester.”

“I can't believe you burnt your father's deck, Mianina,” Kael said while slicing a strip of dried eel, meticulously salting it, and passing it on to Eda. “How did it happen?”

Eda flashed a splendorous smile of overdone gratitude. In the safe enclosure of their shuttered shelter, the gesture seemed particularly intimate to Sariah. She wondered what was wrong with her this night, why she liked Eda so little when everybody, except Delis perhaps, seemed to adore the woman. Why did she have a sudden urge to punch the forester in the nose on account of a salted strip of eel?

“I didn't mean to burn the deck,” Mia said with her mouth full. “It was an accident. It just happened.”

“My, my,” Eda said. “It seems like a very bad year for the Ars brothers’ decks. We might have to grow a new forest just for you and your brothers, Kaelin. But don't worry. I'll give Metelaus a great price on his timber. A kinship special, you may call it.”

The men in the shelter laughed as if someone was tickling their toes. Sariah didn't think Eda was funny. She didn't like the way she used Kael's nickname so frequently, ending with a quick lick of pink tongue over sumptuous lips, as if his name was a spoonful of molasses melting between her lips.

Lazar set his drink aside. “Since Sariah left, Mia has been experiencing these bouts. She's unable to contain her powers. She tried, poor thing, but she can't.”

“I was sad,” Mia said. “I was angry.”

“At first, short bursts of unexpected flow escaped her, singeing a thing or two,” Lazar said. “But then, the bouts got worse. They began to happen more often, until she couldn't control them at all. After his deck burned, Metelaus thought it would be too dangerous to keep Mia away from Sariah for much longer.”

“There's a special link between a stonewiser and her breaker,” Malord said. “Sariah, you broke Mia. It's very possible the child is too young to be separated from you.”

Sariah put her arm around Mia, stroking her skinny shoulders. Sariah's palms were warm, infusing Mia with calmness, appeasing the child's emotions as she had done since the first day Mia had been broken. But even as she was able to draw peacefulness from her inner reserves to comfort Mia, Sariah was troubled. A link that strong was likely to cause great suffering. An attachment developed to such extent could tap into Sariah's weaknesses, cause the child serious injuries, maybe even kill her.

She had not wanted to break Mia. But Mia had been at death's door and Sariah had had no choice. She couldn't abandon the child to suffer the consequences of her breaking on her own. She had to find a way of helping Mia to overcome the attachment. She considered the little girl, cuddled with her head on her lap. Mia's eyes grew heavy with Sariah's infusion. She promptly fell asleep.

“Has she had any other bouts lately?” Kael asked.

“A few, when we first set out,” Lazar said. “Fewer as we neared you and none since a few days back. She gained more control as we came closer to you.”

“How did you find us?” Kael asked. “We took great pains to avoid leaving any tracks.”

“That, too, it's a bit of a mystery,” Lazar said. “The forester helped.”

Another one of Eda's smiles launched gracefully toward Kael. Sariah's blood boiled a few degrees warmer. She didn't like the bitterness unsettling her stomach and turning the good food before her into an unappetizing heap of dung.

“But it was Mia who found you,” Malord said. “The child can sense Sariah. The closer we came to you, the more accurately she could pinpoint your whereabouts.”

Sariah was shocked. “Sense me? How?”

“I'm not sure,” Malord said. “I can feel the attachment in her, but I can't follow where it reaches. Perhaps when you probe her, you'll understand better than I can. It's nothing I've seen before.”

Sariah repressed an urge to groan. If Malord, the wisest stonewiser in the Domain, couldn't understand this, how was she going to fix it?

“Now, now, we mustn't be all dreary and down.” Eda patted Kael's thigh. “Surely you've made some progress with your search for this Leandro, haven't you?”

“You told her?” Sariah stared at Kael, seeing a reckless blabbering fool she had never known before.

“I thought the forester could help.”

Of course he did.

“Kaelin, I wished you had stayed for a few more days,” Eda said. “After you left, the Enduring Woods came to bloom. The flower clusters were a feast to the eye. And the harvest, you wouldn't believe the harvest. The pericarps were glorious—”

“The what?” Sariah said.

“The pods,” Kael explained. “Enduring woods yield their seed in pods instead of fruit, like peas and beans.”

“Poor wiser,” Eda said. “She doesn't understand what we're talking about. It must be hard for you to follow when Kael launches into one of his long land-healing monologues.”

Kael may have bored Eda with such monologues, but not her. Sariah wondered if that was good or bad. Bad, she decided promptly.

“I was telling you about the flowers. The perfume we extracted, Kaelin, it could come straight from Meliahs’ gardens. Here, take a whiff.” The woman stretched her elegant neck toward Kael, an irresistible offer. “Isn't it exquisite?”

Someone's nose was at risk. Kael's? Eda's? Sariah didn't know whose yet, but the injury was imminent. Sariah didn't know much about the woman's occupation, but shouldn't a forester have brawny arms and rough hands from felling trees and stripping bark, instead of shapely limbs and manicured nails?

She stared down at her own hands. They had been nice to look at before she left the keep, unornamented, long fingered and always well-kept as required by the Guild's strict tidiness rules. Not now. The gaudy bracelet looked like a harlot's trinket. The raw skin around her chafed wrist reminded her of a dog with the mange. Her palms were scarred by the twin stones’ searing touch. Her fingers looked stubby and callous. She picked at the jagged nail on her thumb, the one she had accidentally bruised yesterday. And she wasn't even a forester.

“What does a forester do anyway?” she asked. “I mean, you don't exactly look like a timber laborer.”

Eda's chuckles rang like the chimes of a merry bell. “I forget you're not of the Domain. I'm the custodian of the last of the Enduring Woods. I handle the harvesting, production and sale of the woods’ derivatives—perfume, gum, bark and sap—but I don't fell the trees myself. We've got laborers who do that.”

“The forester is an ancient name in the Domain,” Malord said. “Eda's family has watched over the woods since before the rot.”

Sariah supposed she should be awed by the distinction. Eda was a woman of the greatest noble blood, who still endured in the Domain with title, good name, and obviously, coin, since she seemed to know her business well.

“And you came along because…?” The suddenness of Sariah's question silenced the shelter. She felt mildly ashamed, as if she had committed a breach of courtesy.

“I thought I would assist Lazar in his search for Kael,” Eda said. “Since I had given Kael directions, I knew where he was heading. I do enjoy getting out of my woods every so often.”

Her woods
. Eda smiled and everybody smiled, and then she said something funny again, and all the men were laughing. The effect of her smile on the opposite sex was astonishing. What was it about the other woman that bothered her so? Eda had not been mean to her, or unkind. She had not been rude, as Sariah had been, or distant, despite her high status. Yet something had Sariah seething, boiling like a neglected kettle on a hot fire every time Eda's yellow-tinged gaze caressed Kael with the length of her amazing eyelashes. Sariah had never doubted Kael. She knew his emotions, his trueness, the extent of his affections. Yet despite all that, this woman still disturbed Sariah, stirring her basest emotions. Why?

Because Eda wasn't a wanted fiend, or a scrawny fugitive, or a rogue wiser with a heart of stone. Because Eda wasn't a weary soul or a well-used, stone-pledged servant. Because instead, she was a match to Kael's merits—earthy, lovely, noble, wealthy, fine of body and character, and high on heat. Because Eda was the kind of woman that belonged with Kael.

It was Kael's grip that brought Sariah back to the conversation, the inquiry of his fingers reaching to interlace with hers, the subtle plaiting of her five cold digits to his four warm fingers. The loss of his middle finger hadn't weakened his grasp. Its absence still pained Sariah, and yet the intimacy was overriding, for he offered his left hand to no one but her.

“Malord, perhaps you ought to return with Lazar,” Kael was saying. “I can't say ours will be an easy road.”

“I know,” Malord said, “but Sariah might yet have need of me. I'm staying, but Lazar here must go back right away.”

Lazar's smile alerted Sariah to news. “Do tell.”

“Kemere,” Lazar said. “She's with child.”

Sariah wasn't blind to the undercurrent of emotion exchanged between the brothers. A sense of quiet awe traveled between Kael and Lazar, wordless joy that spoke of pride and delight. Lazar was beaming. The expression on Kael's face was so honest and raw, so vividly happy for his brother that Sariah found herself wishing foolishly that she could be the source of such joy.

She had done all she could, although only she knew that. She had drunk the last of the potion months ago. In an intricate, cunning trade, she had managed to trick the Guild's Prime Hand into relinquishing one of the Guild's best kept secrets, the Mating Hall's own brew, the only concoction known to unlock a stonewiser's repressed reproduction cycles.

Sariah had no idea if it had worked. She was no ignorant adolescent. On the other hand, her stonewiser biology differed from that of the average woman. She had no helpful experience in matters of pregnancy and birth, which were among the many prohibited topics at the keep. Besides, these days, she wasn't sure having a child was a good idea. Her world was too dangerous, a poor offering for a helpless baby.

It had been Kael's notion, to grow a family in the generations’ traditions, to gift a child with the parents’ labor and sweat, Meliahs’ ways. Like most of Kael's ideas, it was infectious. Lying with him, she had discovered her own little dreams too, delusions, if one believed the ways of the Guild, but at least they were her delusions. She didn't need to worry. The Prime Hand's potion had probably been as rancid and spoiled as it tasted, and her womb continued to be as lethal to life as it had always been.

“Kemere's six months’ gone,” Lazar was saying. “That's why I want to return soon. Wouldn't want to miss a day if I could, but Metelaus was busy with the distributions, and he wouldn't trust anyone with Mia but you and me, Kael.”

“You must be off soon then,” Kael said, “tomorrow at the latest. You never know how long the road is going to be in the Domain. Meliahs forgive you, if you take too long and Kemere's time comes—”

“She'll kill me.”

“And for good reason.”

Kael and Lazar broke out into the quiet laughter the grown children of Ars shared with each other, a very private sound, an honest, contagious chuckling that Sariah loved to hear.

“A toast.” Eda raised her cup. “To the Ars brothers. May they outlast the rot, may they return to the land.”

Resigned to the fate of the barren, Sariah drank to the progress of Ars. She was thinking, though. The forester had come for a purpose. And Kael's dreams deserved to come true.

Twelve

 

S
ARIAH WAITED UNTIL
both decks were filled with the quiet noises of sleep before she tiptoed over Delis and Mia and stepped out to meet the unspoken summons. The stars were ablaze. For a moment, the woman was part of the night, but then she turned to face Sariah, and her eyes, knowing and two-toned yellow, revealed her as the earthly creature she was.

“You've come.” She patted the place next to her on the deck. “I wasn't sure you would. You seemed too aloof to care most of the time.”

Aloof? Not when her blood was straining through her veins like thickly clotted cream.