“I’d heard that,” Phoran said. “But if I rode around on a gelding or, worse yet, a mare, my protocol minister would have fits.” He hummed a happy little tune to himself as the big grey reared up then quick-stepped sideways. “Might be a good reason for doing it, at that. But Blade does his job—which is to make me look like a good horseman and make himself look athletic and expensive.”
He sounded disparaging, but Seraph noticed he had enjoyed the performance at least as much as his horse had. Once they had been riding for a few hours, the hot-bred stallion settled down to a few jitters.
Hennea watched the sun bring out gold and red highlights in Jes’s dark hair and wondered at the unexpected gift of him, an almost unwelcome but greatly desired gift.
Jes walked beside Hennea’s horse, Gura at his heel. The pace seemed to give Jes no trouble, though the horses had set out at a rapid walk. She hadn’t exchanged a private word with him since the afternoon when she’d guarded his sleep, but somehow she felt as if they had both accepted that as a new step in their courtship.
He was hers now.
The natural rhythms of travel had broken them into small groups—Seraph and Tier at the head: Phoran, Rinnie, Lehr, and Ielian: Toarsen, Kissel, and Rufort: Hennea, Jes, and the dog bringing up the rear.
She could hear the sound of the conversations in front of her, but could make out only a word here or there. Since she and Jes traveled behind them with a light wind in their faces, no one else would hear anything they said to each other.
She didn’t know what to say to him. She was seldom awkward, though it was getting to be a familiar state around Jes. Not that she talked all the time—like Tier—but she was comfortable with her silences. Or had been. Now she wanted to speak to Jes, but she didn’t know what to say or how to say it—so she stayed quiet.
Jes patted her knee. “Don’t worry so much,” he said.
It was so unexpected—although why she couldn’t have said, since she knew he was an uncommonly powerful empath—that she laughed.
“I’ll try not to,” she said. She couldn’t see his face to read what was there, but his shoulders were relaxed and easy. “It’s just that I feel as though there is a lot to say—but whatever I need to talk about won’t reach my lips.”
“I do that a lot,” he said gravely. “Usually I wait it out. If it’s important, it’ll come sooner or later. Running helps.”
“I think I’ll just enjoy the sun on my shoulders,” she told him.
He turned his head then so she could see his smile. “I told you about the sun,” he said.
“Sometimes you’re a wise man.”
He laughed. “Sometimes. Usually I’m stupid.”
All desire to laugh left her. “Who says so?” she asked.
He turned around to walk backward and grinned. “No need to draw your dagger, sweet lady. I say so. Most times I can hardly hold a conversation.”
“You’re not stupid,” she told him.
His grin faded into a gentler expression that she couldn’t read—though for some reason it caused her pulse to quicken.
“All right,” he said. “I’m not stupid.”
Then he turned around, and she could think of nothing more to say: but she wanted to, if only to see that unreadable expression on his face again.
They set up camp while the sun was still a few hours from setting because Tier knew from experience it would take them longer to set up camp the first few days than it would later on. Also, Lehr was still recovering from the illness he’d suffered at Colbern, and the lowland horses that Toarsen and his boys were riding were tiring faster because they weren’t used to the heights. An early day or three in the first part of the trip would give them time to acclimatize and Lehr time to heal completely.
“Besides,” he explained to Seraph, as he stretched out beside her on a fallen tree with a twig in his mouth. He put his head on Seraph’s lap. “I like this camp. There aren’t a lot of rocks in the ground, and that lake is full of trout for supper.”
“The boys are enjoying it,” said Seraph, as a wave of excitement rose among the intrepid fishermen as Toarsen jerked on his fishing line—but Tier was watching his daughter.
“For a man who’s likely never been around a child, he’s good with Rinnie,” he said.
“… not like that, Phoran,” Rinnie was saying, trying to teach the Emperor how to bait his hook. “If you don’t get the grub stuck on good, it’ll just fall off.”
“He lets her get away with ordering him around,” said Seraph dryly. “I think it amuses him, but it’s not a habit that’ll serve her well with her brothers.”
Tier took the twig out of his mouth and pointed it at Rinnie, who had both hands on her hips and was shaking her head in exasperation at something Phoran had asked. “He’d better be careful. I know my Rinnie. If he loses that meek posture and starts laughing, he’ll be in for a drenching.”
Gura barked at a flopping fish that Toarsen pulled onto the shore.
“Toarsen’s been fishing before,” Seraph said. “And Kissel, too.”
“Leheigh’s right on the river, same as Redern.” Tier adjusted his head so he could watch the boys more comfortably. “It would be more surprising if Toarsen couldn’t fish—and Kissel does whatever Toarsen does. Rufort can’t fish, but he’s been in the woods—did you see how quickly he had that fire built? You don’t learn that in the city. Our Ielian, though, is a city boy through and through. Sensitive, too. We’ll have to keep Rinnie away from him—he won’t think it’s funny when a ten-year-old girl tells him what he’s doing wrong. I’ll have a talk with Lehr.”
“You can talk to Rinnie, too,” advised Seraph. “She’s pretty considerate of people if she knows what will bother them.”
“Where did Hennea and Jes go?”
Seraph bent her head toward him and brushed his cheek with hers. “Since we had more fishermen than hooks, Hennea said they’d go out and gather firewood or greens.”
He wiggled his eyebrows at her. “We could go gather firewood.”
She laughed. “My mother told me about men like you.”
When the fish were all caught and eaten and the sun setting, they gathered around the fire. Tier tuned the lute he’d brought back with him from Taela.
“Play ‘The Marcher’s Retreat,’ please, Papa?” asked Rinnie.
And so began the singing. They were into the second verse before Seraph’s soft alto joined in. She didn’t like to sing in public, he knew, though she sang with him when it was just family. It was a sign of how much she’d taken to Phoran and the boys that she sang at all.
The soft lamenting tones of “The Marcher’s Retreat” gave way to the rollicking “Big Tag’s Dog’s First Hunt.” He liked that one especially because he’d spent a whole month learning the quick-fingering for the tricky runs from his grandfather the summer before he’d left to soldier. It was the last song his grandfather had taught him.
Lehr pulled out his pennywhistle and played the descant, while Rinnie used a pair of sticks for rhythm accents. It was too fast for the boys who didn’t know it, but Toarsen kept up with them until the last chorus, which was sung twice as fast as the rest.
Tier picked a soft ballad next, a common one that everyone would know. There was a duet on the second chorus that Jes and Lehr took. Their voices were almost identical in timbre, and Tier always enjoyed listening to the unusual texture that similarity added to the music.
On the third chorus, Tier’s fingers failed him, and he missed a note.
He continued as if there were nothing wrong, and no one seemed to notice. It wasn’t as if he played the wrong note, after all. His fingers had just hesitated a moment too long.
He’d played it hundreds of times and never missed a note—still, a missed note should have been nothing to worry about. That is what he told himself as he finished the last verse and swept into the chorus again, but he couldn’t put aside that for that bare instant, while his fingers stilled, he’d had no idea who he was or what he was doing.