Changespell Legacy (30 page)

Afraid
, Jess realized suddenly. Outmatched and knowing it. He was a courier, not a warrior. A courier, not a wizard. And one man against two, struggling with his body's limits since his arrival here.

She moved up behind him and murmured in his ear, "Two of us. And Ramble will not be taken. Three."

He cast her a grateful look—and in another instant both of them jerked to attention as the top bale of hay fell inward. Within moments the intruders had tossed enough bales into the aisle behind them to walk through, kicking the first bale out of the way.

The darker of them looked at Carey and Jess and then took in Ramble beyond—Ramble, on his knees and interested, now, in the new arrivals. Interested and wary, but hardly alarmed in spite of Jess's warning, in spite of her obvious concern.

No longer assuming they had the same interests.

"I hate it here," the man said. "Don't make this hard. I'm not in a good mood."

"I feel for you," Carey said. "Neither am I."

"The question is," the lighter man said, nodding at Ramble so far, "what has he told you?"

Jess said in a low voice, "Nothing. He knows nothing. Leave him alone."

The man gave her a grin of what looked like true amusement. "
He's
safe. All we have to do is take him back and he's a horse again; he can't talk then."

"He can barely talk
now
," Carey said. "How the hells did you even know we were here, or that we had the palomino?"

Jess glanced at Ramble, who seemed more wary. Annoyed, even. She'd be, in his place. But he still had no idea— "Here's how it's going to go," the light man said, ignoring Carey's question. "We're taking you back to Camolen. Once the situation there is settled enough that you can't interfere, you'll be released."

Nothing about Carey's body language made Jess believe the man, although when he spoke it was as if he wasn't concerned about the intruders in the least. As if they were in casual negotiation. "Interfere with what?"

The light man said, "That would be telling." He glanced at his partner, whose blandly pleasant features showed impatience. "See it, Carey. You're two couriers, and we . . . we're good at what we do.

Shieldstones can be removed. You want things to turn out well, just come along."

"No," said Jess.

"Carey," the light man warned.

"He does not speak for me," Jess informed them.

"I
told
you," the darker man grumbled to the lighter. "Waste of time."

And Carey said, "But she speaks for me. We'll return on our own terms. Whoever you sent after Dayna failed—"

We don't know that
. But Jess was silent.

"—and I'd like to be here when she gets back."

So casual. Though his stance was anything but, and Jess found herself easing back, and Ramble snorted and— Someone moved first. She didn't see who and she couldn't even tell what, just that Carey doubled over and then he hit the stall bars, the knife falling from his hand, the light man grabbing his spellstones right through the T-shirt, yanking— Jess scooped up the knife in a desperate furor with no strategy and no skill, but still with the astonishing quickness to slash the knife down the man's arm, leaving him hissing with surprise and pain, turning from Carey with a precision movement that disarmed her even as the darker man came in with brute force and slammed her against the stall, her head hitting the bars so the world turned black and distant, but not so distant she couldn't hear Ramble roar, "
Mine!
"

Something knocked her aside; she clutched at the bars and didn't go down, but wasn't on her feet . . . yet no one touched her. The world came back slowly, and even then she didn't understand what she saw. Carey, on his feet, sparring with the lighter man and taking the worst of it—but he had the knife again, and he had a grin on his face, a strange grin that Jess found frightening and reassuring at the same time though she barely had time to regard it as anything at all before she had to throw herself aside, stumbling into the stall. The
empty
stall.

Ramble. Ramble who didn't understand, but knew when another stallion touched his mare. Hurt her.

Mine
. And the darker man—not as fast as his partner, not as precise—didn't know how to defend himself against a man who fought not as a man, but a horse. Going for the throat. Hammering blows to chest and sides in a strange overhand punch, quicker and stronger and driven by more feral instincts than his thinking opponent could hope to draw on. Bloodied, the man went down, and should have stayed down—for as horses did, Ramble drew back to let him admit defeat—but gave no quarter when the man bulled back to his feet, back into the fight. Ramble's grunts were of rage; the man's of pain and not a little surprise.

And Carey held his own—a delicate balance with which Jess, climbing to her feet, was loathe to interfere. Not until a chance shift in position allowed the lighter man to see his partner's fate, and he muttered a curse, flying into action—moving quickly, so quickly Jess stood stunned as he danced around Carey in a sinuous pattern, ending up behind him to place one resounding blow to Carey's back, one so hard the very sound of it made Jess hurt and Carey drop straight to the ground.

"Stay down!" the man snapped, and she thought it was to Carey but realized the man shouted at his partner—and his partner, listening or else at last simply unable to rise again, ceased to trigger Ramble's fury.

She thought about going for the lighter man, and wasn't sure; she thought about yanking Ramble aside and wasn't sure, and then she heard Carey make a strange gasping noise and
knew
. She threw herself between Carey and the lighter man, glaring him off—but he wasn't attacking any more. He froze, looking at her, assessing her, both of them caught in an instant of hesitation to see what the other would do.

And then something eased within him; he backed up, seeming more resigned than anything and dripping blood from the cut she'd inflicted; blood from that cut sprayed across the white boards of the stalls, painted by the pattern of his own whirling movement. He gave her the slightest of nods.

Disbelieving, distrusting, Jess risked a glance at Carey—he made a whooping noise, the sound of someone with all his breath knocked away struggling to take in that first deep gulp—and the lighter man didn't move. Didn't try to take her spellstones, didn't swoop in on Carey.

He doesn't think he has to.

She didn't understand it and didn't care. Ramble, uncertain now, retreated to the doorway of his stall.

"Jess?" he asked.

"Attaboy, Ramble," she said without looking at him. "Good job. Whoa there a moment—" She eased a hand to Carey's shoulder, to where the warmth of his exertion dampened the thick cotton T-shirt, still not sure how long she could look away from the lighter man.

He said, "You stay down there, and we're on truce. Whoa, if you prefer it."

She gave him a quick glare, but didn't see any sarcasm much as she searched, automatically stroking Carey's back, too aware of the movement of muscle and rib playing beneath his skin as he worked through whatever the man had done to him.

"It didn't have to be this way," the man said.

"Yes," Carey said, still choking for breath but levering himself up on his arms to glare, to take in how things had sorted out. "It did." The darker man down, and hurt. Ramble in the stall doorway, now looking entirely to Jess for guidance and still ready to go after anyone who entered what he considered his personal territory. The lighter man bleeding, but . . . looking like someone who'd won.

Except that as he watched Carey recover, he frowned. The frown of a man expecting something else.

Carey said, "We're not going with you."

Exasperated, the man said, "My people just want you out of the way for a while. Not interfering."

Bitterly, Jess said, "How can you think we would trust you? Our friends are dead. The
Council
is dead."

His expression twitched and went oddly blank. "That was a mistake," he said. "They didn't understand what they were dealing with. None of them—my people, your people . . . wizards and their burnin' magic. Rife, all of them." He gave a disgusted shake of his head.

His partner, crumpled up against the wall where Ramble had left him, stirred. "
Just . . . kill . . . them.
"

"We can get the job done without that," the man said sharply, annoyed. "Things are under control here; they're not going anywhere. You take yourself back and have them send a replacement."

Jess flushed with sudden anger. Things
were
under control. This man had not been trying to hurt them, not even after she cut him; until that last moment when he'd turned on Carey with such speed and precision, he'd only been trying to control them. To take the shieldstones and return them to Camolen as he'd said from the start.

If he wanted to hurt them, any one of them, he could. Even Ramble.

"Ramble," she said, "I'm safe from this man. Do you understand? Even if he touches me, he does not possess me. If you go back in the stall, I'll come sit with you in a while."

"Yes?" he said doubtfully, looking at the man he'd hurt, and at the perfectly bland, bleeding stranger who seemed to understand what she was trying to do, for he took another step back, and Ramble's gaze left him and watched how she knelt by Carey, still rubbing his back with absent, soothing gestures.

Carey caught her eye, gestured minutely with his chin.
Move away
.

She felt like she was tearing something inside herself . . . but to her surprise, it was a wound already opened. A tear first made when she'd found Carey in here with Ramble in the first place, only—somehow—moments ago.

She stood. She moved away. "Yes," she told Ramble.

He flicked his head up with the internal conflict of it, and took a step back. "Come sit," he said.

"I will." She hesitated, not wanting to lie to him, not able to do as he wished . . . not wanting to draw him back out again by thwarting him directly. "I have to talk to this man. You can listen if you want. But we made a mess, and we have to clean it up. If you stay in there, we can clean it up faster."

He sighed hugely, gave his own tongue a thoughtful chew or two, and backed into the stall, sliding the door closed himself.

"Attaboy," she murmured. Beside her, Carey tried to climb to his feet, failed—and held up a hand to stay her when she would have gone back to him.

"I'll get there," he muttered. "Just knocked the wind out of me, that's all."

"Should have done more than that," the man said, without any particular heat behind it. He moved to the end of the barn, sliding closed the barn door Jess had left ajar, latching it, and then grabbing some of the baling twine Mark habitually looped around the bars of the hay stall to secure the inner handles. "You can open it," he told them, eyeing them as he tied a final knot, "but not before I reach you. So save us all some trouble and sit still a moment."

Carey gave a short laugh and threw himself into a fit of coughing, through which he said, "I'm the one who hasn't managed to get up yet, remember?"

"Or maybe you just haven't bothered." But the man didn't dwell on it; he shrugged out of his shortcoat as he walked down the aisle, passing between Carey and Jess with no apparent concern even as he took a quick look at his bleeding arm. The look he gave Jess was one of appraisal—almost, she thought, of approval. "Took me by surprise with that one. You're quick. But it won't happen again." Approval, but . . . warning. He completed the rip she'd made in his shirt sleeve and held the arm out to her. "Tie that off, will you?"

Numbly, she did.

No longer bleeding quite so freely, he crouched by his partner, fished around at the darker man's neck, and pulled out a chain of spellstones, quickly sorting through them to find the one he wanted before lifting the injured man's unresisting hand and pressing the stone into it, closing dark fingers around it. "I'm getting out of range," he said. "Trigger the burning thing, get yourself back. Have them send Lubri out.
Not
Mohi, you hear? You've seen where brute force is going to get us."

"Go root yourself," his partner said, not bothering to insert any malice, although Jess wasn't sure he had the energy to do so anyway. When the man stepped back—ending up between Carey and Jess and not, Jess thought, by any accident—his partner triggered the stone, sending a wash of magic over the aisle.

The air rippled, a gentle current turned violent, and cleared.

"Reinforcements on the way." The man took another step or two back, so he could look at both Carey and Jess at the same time. "I understand your concerns, but I was told if you come back with me, you'll be safe, and released once you can no longer interfere."

"Dead people don't interfere," Carey said dryly. He no longer tried to rise, but sat back on his heels, looking better—as if it were a decision to stay down, and not a necessity. Still clearing his throat with a strange and puzzled expression, a flush came high on his cheeks to replace the utter paleness of shock.

Jess looked at the man from beneath a lowered brow and said, "What did you do to him?"

"I—"

A sudden blast of magic took the conversation away, surprising the remaining intruder as much as Jess and Carey—
not reinforcements then
—and he even pulled Carey to his feet, all of them moving back, squinting, trying to understand what they saw. "What?" Ramble demanded from the stall. "
What?
"

And then the magic faded and Jess did understand. She understood all too well. Although her memories from the site of the Council's death were from her equine eyes—colors severely washed out, focus entirely different—she had no trouble recognizing the same effect. Here. In the aisle of Jaime's barn.

What had once been the man's partner was now a lump of skin, jagged bloody bones, pulped and strangely extruded muscles mingled and entwined with what might have been painted flagstone.

And the smell . . .