“Truth. Once, twice, three times I’ve sworn to you, Your Majesty.” I smiled fuzzily at him. “Even in the elfin rune circle before an elfin king.”
“The Witness Circle is elfin?” Javes asked.
I gave the wolf a reproachful look. “You weren’t listenin’.” I pulled my arm away from the dragon and waved it around. “All Iversterre was once the People’s, an’ most of its great cities were elfin.” I swung my arm the other way. “An’ this was the seat of the elfin king before Iver took it away.” My arm dropped and I yawned, my jaw cracking. “They remember that. They remember all of it, ‘cause elves live forever.” My voice slurred more. “But you know that. The king is old as my da but he only looks as old as me.”
“Live forever!” Thadro gave Jusson a speculative look. “But why him and not others, even of his own House?”
“Hell if I know, sir.” I yawned once more and my eyelids drooped. “Maybe somethin’ to do with inheritance and landlaw.”
Jusson stared at me with wide eyes. “Take it off me.”
I looked at him blearily. “Sire?”
“Take it off, now!” Jusson was trembling.
Suiden reached over and pulled my hand off the king’s shoulder, and Jusson quickly moved away, breathing hard.
“I could see—” Jusson stopped, then tried again. “I was—” He broke off once more and stared at my hand, now hanging by my side. “I should order you to cover it up.”
“Cover up the truth, sire?” Javes asked. “That’s not a good thing.” He moved to take Jusson’s place, reaching for my arm. “Though it’s not a good thing to scare your king either, Rabbit.”
Jusson gave a barking laugh. “No, it’s not.” He waved Javes away. “But damned if I will be.” The king stepped back to my side. “Hold it away from me, though!”
I rested my hand palm side up on his shoulder. Suiden took my other arm over his shoulder and as we went out of the room, the royal guards fell in behind so that I had my very own procession to my bedchamber, held up on either side by the king of Iversterre and a prince of Tural.
Chapter Forty-five
I knew before I opened my eyes the next morning that it would be wise to stay very still. I lay in bed swallowing hard against the nausea pushing up from my stomach, and thinking that just maybe I had control over it, when something knocked against my bed, causing me to jump. The next thing I knew, I was face down in the chamber pot trying to hurl up my toes. When I was done, I collapsed on the floor right where I had been kneeling and curled into a ball.
“I beg pardon, Rabbit,” Laurel said.
I moaned.
“Oh. I doubly beg pardon,” Laurel said, his voice much softer. His claws clicked on the floor, and he squatted down and laid his paw lightly on my head. “I have a remedy—”
“Yes,” I whispered. “Please.”
I heard him walk away and then the clink of porcelain. “You’re going to have to sit up to drink this.” I slowly rolled into a sitting position, and waited for my stomach to stop heaving, my arms resting on my knees, my head hanging down. “Hell.”
Laurel handed me a teacup and I downed what was in it, my stomach roiling. I waited, holding my breath.
“I’ve more, Rabbit,” Laurel said.
Without raising my head, I held the cup up and he refilled it.
It seemed that the first dose was staying put, so I drank the second.
“Do you think you can stand up?”
I nodded, then wished I hadn’t. After everything calmed down, I got to my feet, with a lot of Laurel’s help, and carefully walked back to my bed. Or a bed. I peered around at the opulent room as I sat down. “Where am I? And where’s Basel?”
“The king had you put to bed here in the palace,” Laurel said. He walked to the window blinds and closed them, and I sighed in relief. “And I asked the moon soldier to give us privacy. What happened after I left?”
I tried to remember. “Nothing—”
“Something must have, because for the first time since we arrived in Iversly I have been allowed to be alone with you.” He came over to the bed and sat down, careful not to cause it to move. “Captain Suiden actually sought me out last night to asked that I, hmm, check you over.” Laurel’s ears shifted. “Something about the air?”
A memory abruptly surfaced. “Oh, yeah.”
Laurel waited a moment, then sighed. “Tell me, Rabbit.”
“It was probably the wine.” My palm began to burn and I looked down into it. “Traitor.”
“Tell me!”
I winced. “Betrayed and tortured.” I caught sight of Laurel’s ears lying flat and I relented. “They said that I started to fade into the air.”
Laurel frowned. “What was going on when this happened?” he asked.
“We were drinking,” I said. “A lot.” At least I was.
“Nothing else?”
More of the memory popped up. “Honor Ash. I was thinking of her.” I frowned. “Then the wind said something but I couldn’t hear.”
“Has the wind spoken to you before, Rabbit?” Laurel asked.
I eyed the Faena, thinking of what to tell him, and my palm began burning again. I held it up to him. “You did this on purpose, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Answer my question.”
I sighed and lowered my hand. “Yes, the wind has spoken to me before.”
“Since when?”
I started to tell the cat about yesterday, when another memory arose—the wind laughing at me on a mountain lea. I glanced sideways at Laurel. “Since when you first showed up.”
“As I said last night, air is not my aspect,” Laurel said. “Earth is. It’s how I tracked you.” He considered me. “You were hearing the wind that long ago?”
I started to nod again, but stopped myself in time. “Yes. The captain said something about mages being consumed by what they summon—and I remember stories like that too.”
“That has been known to happen,” Laurel said. He stood and went over to where his staff was propped against the wall. “And sometimes they’re seduced. The water mage becoming a waterspout and so forth.” He came back to where I sat. “The idea is to strike a balance, where you are not overwhelmed, nor are you suppressing. Neither is good.”
I eyed his staff. “What are you going to do?”
“How do you feel?”
“Why?”
“Because I am going to show you how to meditate,” Laurel said, “and it’s difficult to do if your stomach is trying to come out your nose. Trust me on this.” He was right, it was difficult to meditate while hung over. I grasped almost immediately what Laurel was explaining, as it was very close to the way I prayed (something I hadn’t done a lot of lately). But it was hard to clear my head when every bit of me was clamoring for attention. My hair hurt and each strand let me know it. Finally Laurel called a halt, saying I had done enough for now. “You understand the basics, and it’ll come easier with practice.”
I sighed and got up, rubbing my forehead.
“Do you also understand how to keep your thoughts from being scryed?” Laurel asked, also standing.
I forgot and nodded, and then winced. That was a little more difficult, sort of like rubbing my head and patting my stomach at the same time.
“Good,” Laurel said. “Once you have learned to center yourself, we will move to the actual training.” He rumbled in his throat as he stretched. “Which has been delayed enough—you could’ve been seriously hurt when you confronted Slevoic yesterday.”
“I can’t wait.” I discovered tepid water in a ewer on the dresser and poured some into the bowl next to it. There was a shaving kit laid out, and I picked up the soap and brush and began to make lather. “To become something that I’d swore I’d never be.”