“You don’t act like it,” he said, half admiring and half resentful.
She smiled and fed another branch into the flames. “Because what I’m most afraid of is having fear control me,” she said. “And so I will not give in to it, no matter what that costs me.”
He was still mulling her words over that night when they all took to their bedrolls and slept.
Senneth’s magic made the warmth of the fire extend all around the camp, but as they set out in the morning, they instantly encountered deep chill and ground frozen so hard that the horses’ hooves rang against it. Tayse picked up the pace just to keep them all warm. Even so, they were barely halfway through the return journey when they made camp that night. Senneth wished, not for the first time, she had a shape-shifter’s skills and could fly the remaining distance to Ghosenhall in a day.
It was still cold the following day, and they continued their faster rate of travel. They were an hour or two past their noontime break when a sudden, sharp cry had Senneth reining back hard. She looked around swiftly, but no one in her party seemed disturbed-seemed even to have heard anything. Tayse, riding some distance in the lead, hadn’t even turned around, and there was no chance Tayse would have failed to react to such a call of distress.
Heart pounding, she slowed her horse still more, then closed her eyes and opened her mind. There it was again, just as urgent, but a little more clear. Cammon’s voice, Cammon’s words.
Senneth! I need you!
CHAPTER 21
AFTER what Justin liked to call “the raelynx incident,” they had two days of relative calm at the palace. Cammon found himself in Amalie’s presence most of that time, though they were never for a minute unchaperoned, and he was fairly careful not to communicate with her silently, either by accident or by design.
But there had been a subtle shift of power, and he and Valri, at least, were aware of it. Amalie was more sure of herself, a little less willing to be guided by the queen. It was hard to pinpoint the change, exactly, because in those two days Amalie did not engage in any overt act of mutiny and never showed Valri the slightest impoliteness. But there was a certain set to her jaw, a speculative expression in her eyes. She looked like a cat that was considering a jump to a high wall, not sure if she could make the leap but almost determined to try.
Valri watched her both days with a close and silent attention, and her mood seemed to grow darker by the hour.
Cammon found himself worrying about both of them.
He tried to articulate his thoughts to Justin, who merely shrugged. “Not your business,” Justin said. “Your role is easy. You’re there to make sure no one dies. It doesn’t matter what else breaks around you.”
“What if Valri tries to murder Amalie?” Cammon said glumly, but Justin only grinned.
“You protect the princess from the queen,” the Rider said. “See? It’s still easy. You have one task. Focus on that task.”
Ellynor was more sympathetic. “Valri has done hard things before,” she said. She was lightly kneading the back of Cammon’s neck, since the tension of the past two days had given him a rare headache. The pain had dissolved with her first touch, but her hands were so soothing he didn’t want her to stop. “You don’t need to be concerned about her. And Amalie is only doing what every young girl must do-figuring out what she is capable of and throwing off the restraints her parents have put around her.” She stopped rubbing his neck, tousled his hair, and sat next to him at the table.
“It’s probably even harder for Amalie than it is for a Lirren girl to break free of her protectors,” Ellynor added. “From what you’ve said, Amalie has been so carefully guarded her whole life that she might have been smothered in care. I think it’s a good sign that she is starting to test her power.”
Justin laughed. “You say that because you’re a rebel yourself.”
She smiled at him but said, “She is to be queen. Surely she needs to start developing her own instincts before she is suddenly sitting on the throne.”
“Well, but her instincts made her want to set the raelynx free!” Cammon said.
Justin shook his head. “Damn. Never saw anything like that.”
“And what did you learn then? Two things,” Ellynor reminded Cammon. “She can control it. And she heeded the words of an advisor she trusted. Both of those things ought to reassure you at least a little.”
“You mark my words,” Justin said. “One day that raelynx is going to be out. And nothing I say, or Valri says, or Cammon says, or Senneth says, will make her put it back in its pen.”
“Maybe,” Ellynor said. “But wait until that day comes before you decide whether or not she’s done a foolish thing.”
IN the morning, despite Valri’s protests, Amalie had another weapons session with Wen and Janni-in the Riders’ training yard.
“I’m perfectly happy to have her learn how to wield a knife, but let her learn inside! Where it’s safe and it’s warm!” Valri exclaimed as she and Cammon hung on the fence rails, watching.
The day was bitterly cold, though at least there was neither wind nor snow. Cammon imagined that the combatants on the field were plenty warm, though he and Valri were freezing.
He grinned. “Can’t imagine she could be safer anywhere than in a field surrounded by Riders,” he said. “Even if Halchon Gisseltess came bursting through the gates this very minute with an army at his back.”
Valri shivered. “Don’t say that.”
Cammon watched as Amalie dodged a blow from Janni and went tumbling to the ground. The princess’s cheeks were streaked with mud, and her borrowed clothes-a close-fitting vest and leather pants tucked into sturdy boots-were already filthy. Yet she had a very businesslike air about her. She had braided back her red-gold hair, pulled on the proffered gloves, and listened to the day’s instructions with calm intentness. She hadn’t done a half-bad job, either, he thought. She would have been dead only four out of the five times Janni had attacked her this morning. Pretty good record for the rawest of recruits.
“Maybe you could stand a little training, too,” he said. “Learn how to use a knife.”
Valri gave him a scornful look. “You think I don’t know how to cut a man’s throat?”
He was so surprised that he stared back at her a moment and then he burst out laughing. “I suppose you do. You’re fierce enough. And you come from fierce enough people. Do you have brothers like Ellynor’s? Do they constantly make war with other clans? All I know is that you were born in the Lirrens and you left. I don’t know what your life was like before.”
She had turned her moody gaze back to the field, where Amalie was circling Janni, her own blade upraised. “If Ellynor has told you much about her life, she has essentially described my own. Except I was wilder than Ellynor, more dissatisfied. I schemed and schemed about getting free. Running away. While I was still a child, I dreamed about declaring myself bahta-lo and walking away from the clans. It was no surprise to anyone that I did it.”
“But it seems to me,” he said softly, “that you are even more confined now than you were in the Lirrens. Tied to the king, tied to his daughter. You named yourself bahta-lo and you crossed the Lireth Mountains, but you are hardly free.”
Her smile was a little grim. “You’re right. And I knew it before I agreed to follow Pella back here. I was trading one kind of prison for another. But at least it was a prison I chose.”
He shook his head. “It still doesn’t really make sense to me. That you would choose this life. The Lirrenfolk barely even acknowledge Baryn as king. Why would you care if his daughter lived or died? Then, I mean,” he added hastily. “Now I’m sure that you love Amalie and are willing to do anything you can to protect her.”