A Play of Shadow (32 page)

“Who’s Baldrinn, Lady Frann?”

“My lover.” A secretive smile. “Lorra’s, weren’t you, Baldrinn, till you saw me? We didn’t share so well, back then.” Another fumble at the brooch. “I hear you, Baldrinn. They sing of dragons in Channen, but I’ve one on my bed, Dearest Heart. A dragon.”

A dragon unaccustomed to scrutiny. But worse was about to come.

Werfol launched himself at Wisp, wrapping his small arms around the dragon’s neck.

Wisp’s entire body trembled with effort. The girl would be pleased he hadn’t snapped off the child’s head nor broken his fragile body.

It had been close.

The boy buried his face against scales able to withstand dragonsfire. “He’s here to protect us, Semyn!” he declared. “I know it. The Bone Stealer can’t take us now!”

Wisp shook himself free, as gently as he could. The boy tumbled unharmed on the bed, looking up with those golden,
seeing
eyes.

“Dearest—there’s no such—” Frann paused to cough, her free hand bringing a cloth to her mouth.

Semyn tore his eyes from Wisp. “There is, Lady Frann. I swear it by our Ancestors. Werfol sees the truth and he saw the Bone Stealer in the barn.”

Wisp lowered himself onto the pillows to consider the situation. He’d heard of this bone thief. In one of his summer night storytellings, Roche Morrill had told the younglings of a creature that built itself from the bones of badly-behaved children. Jenn had been especially well mannered for days afterward, until Kydd had found out and explained it was only a story. Roche had wound up sharing the sows’ wallow.

A story to frighten children into obedience coupled with the glorious strangeness of a turn-born, arrived as they’d been awaiting some punishment for attempting to steal the pony. It made, the dragon supposed, a vague sort of sense.

It was a nuisance. The worlds held sufficient terrors. Why imagine more?

Frann lowered her cloth. “Do I speak the truth, Werfol?”

The little truthseer twisted to look at the woman. “Yes, Lady Frann. Always.” He turned back to Wisp. “Even our uncle lied to us,” too calm, too quiet.

The dragon was impressed. Rage brewed within that small body, a rage better suited to battle than hiding.

He must discuss this with the girl, before she faced the boys again.

The sound of the curtain being pulled and the sudden horror on the boys’ faces told him it was already too late.

“Dragon, save us!” Semyn pleaded as he and Werfol cowered against Frann. “It’s the Bone Stealer!”

Jenn Nalynn stood in the doorway, a tray in her hands. She met Wisp’s eyes with something broken in her own. Without a word, she stepped back, letting the curtain fall.

A pillow hit the dragon’s side, then a cup. He swung his neck around and brought it tip to nose with Werfol, who was on his knees, another makeshift weapon raised and ready. “You didn’t save us!” the boy snarled, retreating not at all. “You’re a liar too!”

Oh, he liked this one.

“Stop at once,” Frann said with unexpected strength. “Look at me, both of you.” She waited until the pair sat attentively, though Semyn kept glancing over his shoulder at Wisp. “That was Melusine’s daughter, Jenn Nalynn. I’ve known her since she was born and her heart holds nothing but good. Werfol. Do I lie?”

“No, Lady Frann,” with reluctance. The boy shuddered. “But—she’s not like us. She’s—” Words failed him.

“She’s not.” Frann patted the bed. “Let me tell you another story.” She looked at Wisp, her eyes filling with memories. “It begins with a dragon.”

The pillows being soft, Wisp curled himself at the dying woman’s feet to listen.

“I
S EVERYTHING ALL
right?” Cynd asked.

Jenn opened her mouth, then closed it, knowing she couldn’t possibly answer.

There was a dragon on Frann’s bed. Her dragon. Out in plain sight.

By the soft murmuring from the room behind her, Frann was telling the boys another story, as if a dragon on her bed was hardly unusual.

While she stood outside the curtain, having terrified Bannan’s nephews again.

Something a dragon, apparently, didn’t do.

Children—or at least Lila’s—were more complicated than she’d imagined.

“Jenn?” With concern. “Is it Frann?”

“Not at all,” Jenn denied hurriedly, and made herself smile as she stepped away from the door. “You were right, Cynd. Frann’s enjoying the boys so much, I didn’t want to interrupt.”

What she wanted was a way to prove to Werfol, and so Semyn, that she wasn’t some dreadful monster sent to steal their bones. Bone Stealer. There was a tale told far too often, in her opinion, even if Aunt Sybb would say cautionary tales had their place. Surely there was a place for more about fluffy bunnies or songbirds?

“You’re welcome to stay, Dear Heart,” Cynd sounded almost shy. “Ancestors Witness, I’d be glad of company while I sew.” She gestured to the table in the middle of the room, stacked shoulder-high with clothing, some to be taken apart for reuse, the rest in need of mending. New work waited on the shelves for Frann’s nimble fingers to finish, but even without, there was sufficient work here, Jenn thought dazedly, to keep everyone in the village stitching. She’d not appreciated how much the Treffs sewed during the winter.

Cynd went around the table. “It’s gone a little mad, hasn’t it?” she observed, rearranging a towering pile of pants themselves in need of patches. “Frann keeps everything so organized and—” she took a sharp little breath. “Usually we work together. All of us.”

Not today, with Lorra having taken to her room, leaving this—and Frann’s care—to her son’s wife, with Wen off on business of her own. “I’ll stay and I’ll help,” Jenn said firmly. “Peggs would be happy to do the same, and Riss. Any of us. You need but ask.”

“Ancestors Busy and Beset. You’ve chores of your own, Dear Heart. Frann—Lorra will be up again soon. You’ll see.” But the words faded into the corners of the room, filled with abandoned projects.

“Of course,” Jenn said, for what else could she say? She went up to the table. “What’s next?”

“There’s Devins’ work coat.” Cynd stuck her arm up one of the sleeves, wiggling a finger through a hole in the elbow. “He’s hard on clothes, that boy. I’ve this to patch it.” “This” being part of someone’s old pants.

Jenn decided not to ask whose. “I can do that.”

Looking happier, Cynd positioned a second chair companionably close to hers in the sun streaming through the front window. They’d not waste oil during the day. Jenn left her basket—sweets, pickles, book, and all—on the floor. For reasons known only to itself, the Treffs’ house toad had taken up a post in front of the basket, then promptly fallen asleep.

They started sewing. Unlike Peggs, Cynd didn’t chatter as she sewed. Everyone knew she was a good listener, or had learned to be one among the more vocal Treffs, but Jenn couldn’t think of anything to say. They stitched in sunshine and almost quiet. Almost, because without their voices, the fire in the cookstove snapped and snarled to itself, and she could hear the murmur from Frann’s room.

Storytelling. The boys were luckier than they knew, Jenn thought with a pang, remembering her turn to listen.

Patch done, she started one for the other elbow; otherwise the coat would come back to Cynd sooner than later. She’d stitch and stay.

Wisp hadn’t shown himself out of whim. Something was going on, in that curtained room, something important.

Perhaps, Jenn Nalynn thought as she stitched and listened, she need only wait.

And hope. That too.

“The Eld, sir.” Tir raised both eyebrows, wrinkling the scars on his forehead.

Bannan grinned. They’d arrived bone-tired and famished, but triumph had a way of pushing such concerns aside. “Davi thought of it.”

“It” being to copy the Eld wagons the demas and his sponsor had brought to Marrowdell this summer past. They’d lashed the tongue of Lila’s wagon to the rear of the sled, leaving clearance for both to turn without collision, then hitched Tadd’s and Kydd’s riding horses to the sled, though Davi’s magnificent team hardly needed the help.

Once in Marrowdell, they’d pulled the wagon and sled inside the mill for unloading, given care of the horses to waiting hands, then headed for home and supper.

“Ancestors Ingenious and Inspired,” Bannan chuckled. “The rig worked like a charm.” Saving another trip. They’d taken all they could free from the snow and left the corpses for the bear.

Dismissing that grim image, the truthseer looked around the room, nodding in greeting. Peggs was there, and Radd, busy stitching a shoe. One of Wainn’s, for that worthy sat nearby on the floor, the shoe’s mate in his hands and the Nalynn house toad close by.

But no nephews.

“Where are the boys?” Bannan asked, disappointedly putting down the chest of their belongings.

“Covie sent word. They’re at the Treffs’.” Peggs, her arm around Kydd, spoke as though this were perfectly normal and to be expected.

The truth, but Peggs wasn’t smiling. “When will they be back?”

“I don’t know. They’ve been there all day.”

“At the Treffs’?” Kydd sounded equally startled. “What of Frann?”

Bannan wondered the same. However well-mannered, Semyn and Werfol were normal, boisterous children, surely more than an ill woman could endure for long. Then he’d a happier thought. Hadn’t Jenn planned to visit Frann as often as she could? She’d a gift for reading aloud; he’d lose all track of time when listening. “Are they with Jenn, then?”

Radd glanced up. “Jenn’s at the Treffs’.”

Which, while also true, wasn’t what he’d asked. Bannan looked to Tir.

Who gave a not-my-fault shrug before bending to fiddle with the thick wrappings on his feet.

He’d been gone mere hours. What could have happened? “Something I should know?” he inquired, half-jokingly.

“Yes,” Wainn said cheerfully. “The boys are hiding in Frann’s bedroom and won’t come out. Wen told me.”

Bannan’s hand fell where the hilt of a sword had been. With what he felt commendable calm under the circumstances, he asked the room in general, “Hiding from what?”

The house toad yawned, showing teeth.

Wainn didn’t look up. “Jenn Nalynn.”

Then it was a game. Likely involving the dragon, doubtless snow. Harmless mischief. His relief lasted until he saw the distress on Peggs’ face.

If not a game, the boys were hiding out of fear and there was only one reason they’d hide from Jenn Nalynn.

But how? The day’s turn had yet to come. The boys couldn’t have seen her as turn-born, unless she’d willed it so.

Or they’d snuck up on her at the wrong moment . . . Ancestors Thwarted and Trapped, it was possible.

He couldn’t imagine a worse way for them to meet. “Is Jenn all right?” the truthseer demanded, looking straight at Peggs.

Who knew what he meant. “Yes. She will be.” She tried her best to smile. “Jenn’s taken them her favorite book. And a jar of pickles.”

“‘Pickles?’” Numb, Bannan waved away any explanation. “I’ll be back.” Once he’d done what he could to repair this.

Out he went, not feeling the cold, too busy feeling everything else as he half ran by the Emms’ house. It wasn’t until he neared their barn that he made himself slow to a walk. He’d gain nothing arriving upset.

And so very much to be lost, if he misstepped with the boys and they spent their winter terrified of the person he loved most.

Jenn should have been the one to decide if she would reveal her other self to Semyn and Werfol. She’d certainly have been the one to know how.

He walked past apple trees asleep and frozen, beside a garden hidden by snow, and hoped he was wrong. Maybe the boys had simply had their fill of strange faces, and gone to hide—

With Frann?

Bannan stopped at the path that led up to the Treffs’ porch. The answers were through that door.

Or were they?

He gave a soundless whistle.

A dark nose came around the corner of the building, snorted steam, then withdrew. An invitation.

After checking to be sure he was unobserved—it being high on his list to avoid questions about Scourge and the Treffs—Bannan followed.

The kruar was waiting, neck and back coated in snow, the rest of him a shadow. For such a stealthy creature—unless he chose, Scourge left no mark in snow or mud—the well-trampled circle alongside the Treffs’ doorless wall and hedges begged a question itself. One Bannan wasn’t going to ask.

Nor did he bother to ask if the vigilant beast knew of the boys’ arrival, Scourge being familiar with the boys’ scent from Vorkoun. “Are they safe?”

The breeze snapped in his ear. “Am I not here?”

Ancestors Witness. First the dragon, now the kruar. He should have bet with Tir who’d take the greater interest in the boys. “I’d have thought you’d come with us,” Bannan said, forcing his voice to be mild. “There’s another bear. A bigger one.”

Scourge tossed his head, flinging snow here and there. “Not hungry.”

Bannan gave the trampled snow a closer look, then wished he hadn’t. Blood streaked it here and there and, frankly, most of what wasn’t streaked red was pink. He kicked a small hole. The disquieting stains continued beneath the new snow into the old. “What’s all this?”

“Supper. Breakfast. Snacks.” The breeze was coy, but lips curled away from fangs and the kruar’s eyes gleamed red. Don’t ask, that said, as plainly as if spoken.

“Idiot Beast,” the truthseer responded, unimpressed. “Are your ‘snacks’ why Semyn and Werfol are hiding?”

A great hoof stamped, and there was nothing coy in the breeze that almost snarled, “You deserted them.”

And didn’t that hit home? “I’m back now—”

Scourge turned to show his hindquarters. Disdain.

Heart’s Blood. Bannan spun on his boot heel to head for the porch, done with the kruar’s foul mood.

A breeze followed, an unwelcome chill on his neck. “The dragon’s a better uncle.”

Furious, the truthseer checked in his tracks, about to turn and—what?

Tell Scourge he was wrong?

It would be a lie.

Wen came through from the kitchen. “Why is your dragon in our house, Jenn Nalynn?”

At the first word, Cynd gave a little start; no one in the village was quite accustomed to hearing Wen speak. At the rest, she put down her mending with care and proclaimed brightly, “There’s tea,” bustling off to prepare yet another cup.

Leaving Jenn with Wen, in the heart of the latter’s home. Wen gazed at her with interest, as did the toad in her hair. Not the Treff toad, Jenn realized for the first time, for that dozed by her basket, but another. A houseless toad. Or was Wen a house of different sort?

“Wisp is with Bannan’s nephews. They’re—” however odd, it was the truth, so she finished, “listening to Frann tell a story.”

Wen nodded as if this made perfect sense. Her pale eyes went to the curtain across Lorra’s door. “Mother?”