The Warlord's legacy

Chapter Fifteen

SHELTERED FROM THE WORST of last season's malice by the gentle shade of surrounding slopes, the valleys of the Cadriest Mountains had long since shed their verdant summer garb, wrapping themselves in coats of scarlet and gold for the autumn to come. The air, though still, was refreshingly cool and smelled of tomorrow's gentle fog. After the distant swamp's oppressive breath-and the strenuous journey over many a hillside trail, down forest paths, and on the King's Highway-the vales were a paradise unto themselves.

But if so, it was a paradise only the horses bothered to notice.

Jassion, as always, saw nothing but the distance stretching before them, separating him from the man he hated more than anything in this world. It seemed, at times, as though the baron's obsession was a tangible barrier he carried around him, one that hemmed him off from the rest of the world.

But for the ignoble nobleman, Kaleb cared little. No, he would reserve his concern, and devote attentions that might otherwise have noted the surrounding beauty, to Mellorin.

The young woman had drawn inward since their encounter with the ogre. Her cloak had become a cocoon, a rampart, a security blanket; her horse an island amid an otherwise empty sea. She spoke to her companions only when she must, and even then, despite her obvious anger at him, directed her queries and comments to her uncle. She'd barely met Kaleb's eyes during those many days, though she often snuck quick glimpses when she thought his focus lay elsewhere.

And Kaleb, after many nights of considered deliberation, finally had to admit that he hadn't any idea of how to deal with her. He was a man of many talents, of substantial knowledge-more than either of his companions suspected-but the eccentricities of young women lay beyond his ken.

He dropped back, ostensibly permitting his mount to crop a few mouthfuls of the deep green grass that sprouted in the shade of far more colorful trees, and allowed Jassion to move some distance ahead. Then, startling the horse with an abrupt yank on the reins, he fell into step beside Mellorin's palfrey.

Still, she would not look at him.

"It's beautiful here, isn't it?" he asked, gesturing as though she'd somehow missed the hills that rolled like playful toddlers around the feet of their mountain parents. "A man could certainly understand why even an ogre would make a home here."

Silence, save for the call of circling birds, the bleating of some distant beast.

"Mellorin," he said, far more softly, "are you ever going to speak to me?"

She offered only a soft sniff, and Kaleb had already tensed to tug at the reins and move away, a scowl forming on his lips, before he recognized it as a sound, not of disdain, but muffled grief.

"Would you truly weep for an ogre?" Only the tenderness in his tone prevented the question from becoming accusation.

Finally, finally, she turned her face his way from within the folds of her hood.

"I don't understand," he told her. "I watched you fight, when Losalis's men attacked us."

She nodded. "And it's the fact you and my uncle see no difference that bothers me. Oh, gods…" He watched her clasp hands to her stomach, as though she would physically restrain the emotions threatening to overwhelm her. "Gods, Kaleb, is everyone in this world like him? Is my father just more honest about who he is?"

For a few moments, the sorcerer struggled to form a reply, for he knew what the wrong answer might cost him. "Mellorin," he said, "do you know what happened to your uncle at Rebaine's hands?"

"I know he was a child when Denathere fell. I know he saw my father disappear with my mother."

"Your father's men didn't flee when he did. First, they slaughtered everyone in the Hall of Meeting. Nobles, commoners, men, women… Everyone."

"But-Jassion?"

"The master of Denathere's Scriveners' Guild saved him. He hid Jassion's tiny body with his own." Kaleb shook his head. "My understanding is, old Jeddeg's the only Guildsman of whom Jassion has ever spoken highly.

"Mellorin, your uncle waited in a pit of corpses, and he was conscious for every moment of it. He struggled to breathe beneath the weight of the dead, to keep their blood from his eyes and mouth, for hours, before anyone found him."

Mellorin had gone white as a corpse herself, her lips trembling. "I had no idea…"

"It's not something he shares readily, though anyone who was around in noble circles at the time has heard the tale. Jassion is-broken. I don't think he'll ever be an entirely rational person, though we can certainly hope that once he's caught up with your father, his temper might cool a little."

"And you?" There was no mistaking the bitterness that flavored her words. "What's your excuse?"

"My-?"

"The ogre wasn't a threat to us, Kaleb! I know why Jassion killed it anyway. I want to know why you didn't stop him!"

"I could tell you it wasn't my place," Kaleb said slowly, "that, appearances aside, I'm the servant in this expedition, not the master. I could," he reiterated, raising a finger as her mouth opened to interject, "but I won't."

"Then why?"

"Do you remember what I told you about my magics? About never really having been afraid?"

She nodded.

"I've also grown accustomed to doing things the, ah, expedient way," he admitted. "When you have more power than everyone else, I suppose you start to view people as just problems to be dealt with. I've killed before, Mellorin. Sometimes a lot, and often without much more provocation than your uncle."

"And you're satisfied with this?" she demanded.

He reached across the gap between the horses to rest a hand on her arm. "I used to be," he said. "Now I think I want to do better."

Yes, he thought as Mellorin tried, and failed, to repress a bashful smile. I believe I am, indeed, doing so much better. THEY STUMBLED UPON THEIR DESTINATION not long after, cresting a shallow rise into the hollow between a pair of great, grass-clad slopes only just too small to be counted among the proper mountains of the Cadriest range.

The valley sprawled wide, a cupped palm full of lush greens and bright golds, undulating where the edges of the hills failed to conform to even curves. A bucolic cottage hid shyly within the shadow of the leftmost hill, and beyond that stood a primitive but sturdy fence of wooden posts. It formed an enclosure sufficient to pen an enormous herd of barnyard animals, or perhaps one abnormally lackadaisical dragon.

It turned out, thankfully, to be the former. Scores of sheep, goats, and the occasional cow wandered about, on both sides of the fence and through an open gate. And it was only those animals that offered the newcomers any sense of scale for the whole tableau.

"You could hold a masquerade ball in that house!" Mellorin murmured after several moments.

Kaleb shrugged. "That's a guest list I'd love to see."

"Are we certain Davro lives here?"

"I'd say so," Jassion answered. "Even if Kaleb did bollix up the spell"-the sorcerer bowed sardonically at that-"I can't imagine any human hermit needing fifteen-foot ceilings."

"I know," she admitted. "It just doesn't seem very-ogrey."

"Are you sure that's not 'ogrish'?" Kaleb asked her. "Perhaps 'ogresque'?"

Mellorin grinned; Jassion looked about ready to strangle something. "Are you two quite finished?"

"Probably not," Kaleb and Mellorin told him in unison.

The baron began marching toward the house, muttering a dozen separate imprecations. With a shared chuckle, the others fell in behind.

"I'm not seeing any smoke from the chimney," Jassion said after allowing himself a moment to overcome his latest snit. "But it's warm enough here that that doesn't prove anything. I'm hoping he's out, so we can catch him unawares, but keep your eyes open."

"I-"

"Shut up, Kaleb."

The rich tang of grasses and turning leaves gave way as they neared, overpowered by the musk of, as Kaleb later put it, "Beef, mutton, wool, and leather in their hoofed larval stage." This close, they could see a few swine as well, rooting in the mud beneath a trough behind the house.

A trough that dripped with the sludgy remnants of a very recent feeding.

The trio drew to an abrupt halt as the implications dawned. Hands dropped to hilts, or rose in readiness to cast.

It was Mellorin who, glancing just the right way through sheer happenstance, saw the spear arcing toward them. She screamed something garbled even as she dived to the soil. The weapon planted itself in the earth nearby, vibrating with a dull thrum, and Kaleb completely understood when he saw her eyes widen in alarm.

It looked very much like someone had just hurled a sharpened tree at them. The spear was two feet longer, and a third again as thick, as that wielded by the ogre in the swamp.

They turned-Mellorin and Jassion picking themselves up from where they'd thrown themselves aside-and there he was, emerging from the house's shadow. The tip of his horn surely cleared fourteen feet, and Mellorin could damn near have stretched out her saddle on one of his arms. In one fist he clutched a second spear, not quite as large as the first, and a weapon that was less a sword than a row of jagged steel teeth protruded from the other.

"All right." His voice was the cry of the earthquake, the deep echo of the mountain hollows. "I knew someone would find me eventually, so let's get this done with. I have cows to milk. You want to tell me what horrible atrocities you're here to avenge, or should we forgo the formalities and just start ruining each other's outfits?"

"Yep, he's definitely been with your father," Kaleb whispered to Mellorin. Then, more loudly, as Jassion began to slide Talon from over his shoulder, "No! Damn it, no steel!" Then, louder, "Davro, we're not here to hurt you."

"Good," the ogre said, his advance never slowing. "Because I'm pretty certain you won't."

"Look," Kaleb continued, backing slowly away, "we just want to talk to you. Just talk!"

"He's not buying it, Kaleb," Jassion growled.

"He's also no good to us dead," the sorcerer reminded him. "My name is Kaleb," he shouted.

"Never heard of you."

"This is Jassion, Baron of Braetlyn."

That, finally, got a reaction. The ogre halted, nostrils flaring. "You, I've heard a great deal about." He cocked his arm, ready to throw, and Jassion tensed to spring aside.

Mellorin stepped forward, shrugging off Kaleb's hand as he reached to stop her, ignoring his hiss of warning.

"My name," she said, holding sword and dagger out to her sides rather than before her, "is Mellorin Rebaine."

And the ogre finally froze-more out of shock, Kaleb surmised, than anything else.

"Mellorin Rebaine?" Perhaps uncertain he'd heard properly, Davro tilted his head, his horn and his shadow making him look very much like a bewildered sundial.

"Yes. I know you've no reason to love my father-"

The ogre unleashed a peculiar barking cough, and the others could only wonder in confusion. It wasn't until he wiped away a tear with the back of his sword-hand that they realized he'd been laughing.

"I see that you've inherited a certain gift for understatement," he said finally.

She nodded. "Among other things. But that's actually why we're here, Davro. Help us, and you might find some measure of retribution."

Davro's brow furrowed, making the great horn quiver. "Perhaps," he said, planting the butt of the spear in the soil beside him, "you'd better come in after all.

"But please use the scraper by the door, would you? I just swept the damn place." "I take it you're no great admirer of your father, then?"

Mellorin sat on the edge of a lumpy mattress that was apparently stuffed with untanned hides and untreated furs, and tried hard to breathe as little as possible. Kaleb perched beside her, offering no sign of his own discomfort save for the occasional flaring of his nostrils, while Jassion stood apart and made no attempt at all to keep the revulsion off his face. Davro himself squatted atop a broad stump that apparently served him as a stool. This close, and undistracted by the rigors of battle, Mellorin noted that each of his hands boasted only four thick fingers, and the deep red of his skin-which she'd previously attributed to sunburn, both on him and the ogre in the swamp-was his normal shade.

Recognizing belatedly that she'd been addressed, she blinked and focused on Davro's face, trying not to gawk at the solitary eye, the towering horn, or the protruding lower tusks. "I, ah, actually know surprisingly few details of my father's life," she admitted. "I didn't even know who he really was until a few years ago, and my mother still thinks me ignorant." Or she did before I ran off with Kaleb and my uncle. "But no, I'm not happy at all with what I do know. Corvis Rebaine was not a good man."

"Again with the understatement," Davro rumbled, accompanied by another bestial chuckle. "So what is this, then? Are you out on a great crusade of justice, to make right your father's wrongs?" The disdain was palpable, thick enough to paint with.

Kaleb frowned. "I'm not certain that her motivations are germane to-"

"No," Mellorin interrupted. "That is, if I can make up for some of what he did, I'll certainly take the opportunity. But it's not why I'm here. I want," she elaborated without waiting to be asked, "to find out how he could do what he did… why he abandoned his family to pick up where he left off after so many years."

"He wanted to protect you from Audriss," Davro protested, even as his expression twisted in what could only be stunned disbelief that he was defending the man.

"Originally, maybe. But he didn't stop there."

"Of course he didn't." The ogre shook his head. "I should have known. You can't believe anything that bastard says. If he told me the sun would rise tomorrow, I'd stock up on torches."

"Right. I want to ask him why."

"I see." The ogre chewed the inside of his lip. Then, "And if you pull the other one, my horn lights up like a firefly."

"What-?" Mellorin sounded almost shocked, and Jassion was scowling darkly, but Kaleb's lips curled into a shallow, knowing smile.

"The thing about your father," Davro said, "is that he had a motive for everything, be it ulterior or just-uh, 'terior,' I suppose. And I don't believe for a second that your apple, however cute and tiny, fell that far from his ugly, ornery tree. Curiosity can make a person do a lot of things, but give up the only life they know? Uh-uh. You don't have a question, Little Rebaine, you have a goal."

And for the first time in Kaleb's experience, he saw the girl's expression twist-not in fury, not in sorrow, but in hatred. "My father," she repeated, "was not a good man. He was a monster. Those lives he didn't destroy…" A single tear threatened to spill from her eye, then evaporated in the searing heat of her emotion. "… he turned into lies. And he never paid for any of it."

"He lost his family," Kaleb pointed out. "He lost you."

"Another crime, Kaleb. Not a punishment."

"All of which is utterly immaterial," Jassion growled, unable to swallow his rising impatience-and, just perhaps, taken aback by the fervor of his niece's hate. Mellorin leaned back, breathing heavily, and allowed the interruption to go unchallenged. "We need your help finding him. Nothing else matters."

"I have no loyalty to Rebaine," Davro said thoughtfully. "And precious little affection for him."

"Then-"

"But I also don't need trouble from the likes of him again, and he knows where I live. I like my solitude; you might've picked up on that. I'm not convinced it's in my best interests to get involved."

"Is that so?" The baron took a single pugnacious step. "Then perhaps, ogre, you might consider what sorts of attention we can call down on your valley! You'd never be left alone again, if you-"

"No!" Kaleb shot to his feet, grasping Jassion's shoulders and spinning him around. "You might try not talking for a change, old boy. You clearly need the practice."

"What the hell do you think you're-"

"How do you think Rebaine got his help in the first place, you idiot?" he hissed, casting a glance at Davro's rapidly reddening face. Then, to the ogre, "My apologies, Davro. My companion spoke without thinking. We would not, of course, attempt to force your cooperation."

Jassion glowered, but said nothing.

Davro himself nodded in Kaleb's direction, though his lone eye never left Jassion. "Apology accepted."

"Good." Kaleb stepped in front of Jassion, a clear signal that it was he, not the baron, with whom Davro would continue to deal. "We've no intention of interfering with your life here, or of bringing trouble-be it Rebaine or anyone else-down on your head. Please, just tell us anything that might help us in our hunt. We'll bother you no more, and you just might acquire some small measure of that justice you earlier mocked."

Inhuman shoulders rose and fell in a heavy shrug. "I'm really not sure what I can tell you. I've neither seen nor heard word of Rebaine since I left Mecepheum six years ago. He's obviously not with his family, so I have no sodding idea where he might've gone."

"That's it?" The words practically quivered as they escaped Jassion's tightly clenched teeth.

A second shrug. "Seems so." A pause. "Maybe if you've access to a sorcerer. After the war, Rebaine cast…" Broad lips quirked into a scowl around the two protruding tusks. "We haven't met, have we?" he asked Kaleb abruptly.

"I think I'd remember. Why?"

"I don't know. Something vaguely familiar about you-but then, all you two-eyed little dwarfs look the same to me."

"Maybe," Kaleb said, "but I can assure you, we've never met. You were saying?"

But it was no good. Whatever the ogre had seen in Kaleb-or imagined he'd seen-was apparently too much. "No, I don't think so," Davro told him, rising from his stool to tower above them. "I think it's time for you to go."

"Damn you," Jassion began hotly, "there's no way-!"

"I think there is." Somehow, without the twitch of a single muscle, the ogre's hand drew their attention to the massive blade at his side. "Go away. You want answers? Go ask Seilloah, the witch, if Theaghl-gohlatch doesn't eat you-and if she doesn't, for that matter. I still have cows to milk."

Without another word, Kaleb offered a shallow bow, and led both a puzzled Mellorin and a sputtering Jassion through the cavernous doorway. "All this way!" Minutes and some few hundred yards later, the baron remained furious enough to chew horseshoes into nails. "For nothing! Just more wasted time. We ought at least to make sure that damn monster pays for his own crimes before we leave!"

Mellorin scowled but chose, for the moment, not to respond. "I don't understand," she asked Kaleb instead. "He was about to tell us something. What happened?"

"I don't know," the sorcerer admitted with a much smaller shrug than Davro's. "Maybe he sensed something of my magics? Ogres aren't much taken with sorcery. Or maybe I really did remind him of someone."

"Or maybe he's just a lunatic!" Jassion snapped. "What does it matter?"

"It's just, if we could convince him to finish what he was saying…"

"He doesn't have to," Kaleb told her. "I know what he was saying." Then, "If you two keep staring at me like that, your eyes are going to pop out and roll away."

"You know?" Jassion squeaked.

"I'm almost certain that's what I just said. It's what I heard myself say. Perhaps I need to clean out my ears."

Despite his warning, the others continued to stare.

"During his various campaigns," Kaleb said with a sigh, "Rebaine cast a spell on his lieutenants, so he could find them again if necessary. It's a flimsy, tenuous magic, and no, before you even ask, I can't use it to trace him back. If the spell had been cast on me personally, I could probably do it, but as it is, the connection's just too faint."

"Oh," Mellorin said, disappointed. "I guess maybe we did come all this way-and kill that ogre," she added deliberately, "-for nothing."

Jassion, however, was frowning, not in his typical disapproving scowl but apparently in thought. "I admit, I know almost nothing about magic…"

Kaleb's eyes went comically wide. Jassion ignored him.

"But would such a spell last indefinitely?"

"No," the sorcerer told him. "A long time-decades, potentially, if no other magics interfered with it-but not forever."

"So wouldn't Rebaine have likely cast the spell on Davro again, after his war against the Serpent? In case the old one eventually faded?"

"Quite possibly. Are you going somewhere with this, old boy? Thinking of taking up magic? It's a little late, and I'm not sure you've got the brains for-"

"It just seems to me, in my ignorance," Jassion said with a slow smile, "that if the first one hasn't dwindled yet, two such spells on the same subject might leave a heavier magical trail than one. Wouldn't they?"

Kaleb's jaw sagged, practically unhinging itself very much like a snake's. "I'm an idiot," he said to Mellorin.

"I just want it noted," Jassion announced smugly, "that I'm not the one who said that."

The sun had settled beyond the mountains by the time Davro returned to his house, carrying a bucket of milk large enough for Mellorin to have bathed in. His eye narrowed in a fearsome glower at the sight of her perched on his stoop.

"I told you to leave!"

"We did, Davro. Kaleb and Uncle Jassion aren't here. It's just me."

"Fantastic. That's two-thirds what I asked for, then, isn't it? What are you doing here, Little Rebaine?"

Mellorin rose. "I want…" She swallowed once. "I want you to tell me about my father."

"You're joking."

"No, I'm not."

"You're crazy, then. Go away."

"Davro…" She rose to her feet, which brought her barely up to the giant's waist. "I don't know what drove you to live out here, apart from your family and your tribe. And I don't need to, to know that it can't have been an easy choice.

"But it was a choice you got to make. I don't know my father anymore-I suppose I never really did-and that's not something I chose. It's something that was taken from me. I know he's not your favorite topic…" She smiled. "Understatement, again?" she asked.

Despite himself, Davro grinned back at her.

"Please, Davro, just tell me something about him. Then, I promise, I'll go."

The ogre set down the bucket with a deep sigh and dropped into a crouch. "All right," he agreed. "But just a little bit."

"Thank you."

"I suppose," he began, deep in thought, "it makes-" He yawned deeply, his head splitting into a gaping chasm of chipped teeth and jagged tusks. "I'm sorry, it must've been-" Yawn. "-a more tiring day than I-" Yawn. "-realized. It makes most sense-" Yawn, a few blinks. "-to start with-"

The ogre toppled with a crash that set a dozen startled sheep to bleating. His snores, sufficient to shake the earth and shame the thunder, began instantly.

An unwary mind, and a few moments of contact.

Mellorin's body flexed, bulged, and melted like candle wax. A moment of hideous distension and impossible shapes, and then Kaleb stood in her place, blinking rapidly as he acclimated to the change in height. Swiftly, he knelt at Davro's side, casting a second spell to keep the ogre deep in slumber. When he finished, he glanced around and found he remained alone.

"Hey! Are you two just going to leave me standing here with my bugger-stick in my hand, or were you planning on joining me anytime soon?"

A shuffling in the nearby grasses presaged a pair of silhouettes rising into view.

"I think I'm appalled. Must he say things like that?" he heard Mellorin ask plaintively.

"I don't know if he must," Jassion replied with unaccustomed humor, "but I've noticed that he very often does."

"Keep watch on him," Kaleb said as they neared. "He should be out for hours, but I've never tried anything quite like this. Fiddling with Rebaine's location spell shouldn't have any effect on the magics keeping him asleep, but let's not take chances."

And then, despite his insistence in calling them to his side, Jassion and Mellorin could do nothing but wait as Kaleb knelt over the ogre's chest and muttered his incantations.

"So?" Jassion asked as the sorcerer rose, his expression weary, more than an hour later. "Did it work?"

"I'm not…" Kaleb shook his head and leaned against the wall of the towering house. "Maybe. A little."

"How could it work a little?"

"Even with the two spells layered on each other, the trail's so tenuous I can barely feel it. I'm sensing a slight pull, but it's about as precise as pissing into a crosswind. I can tell you that he's somewhere between south and east of here."

"Ah. So we only have to search about a third of Imphallion, rather than all of it," Jassion groused. "At this rate, Rebaine will be dead before we ever get near him."

"He may not be the only one," Kaleb said.

"At least it's something," Mellorin interjected, not in the mood for another argument. "It's more than we had before."

Kaleb offered her a gentle smile.

"There's another option, isn't there?" Jassion asked. "As I recall, Rebaine was known to have had four lieutenants during the Serpent's War. We've only found three. We could try to find-Ellwyn? Something like that."

"I thought you were getting tired of traipsing all over the map hunting for these people," Mellorin said.

"I am. But I'm not sure how traipsing all over a third of the map looking for Rebaine is any better."

"Ellowaine."

The baron and the warlord's daughter both blinked. "What?"

"Her name," Kaleb said, "is Ellowaine. She's already been dealt with. She can't offer us anything new." And that, no matter how Jassion insisted and Mellorin cajoled, was all he would say.

"Fine!" Jassion, clearly, felt he'd had enough. "Let's conclude our business here, and we can be on our way." He moved toward the slumbering ogre, hand closing about Talon's hilt.

"No!" Mellorin hadn't even realized she'd spoken until the faint echo came back with the sound of her own voice.

"Oh, come off it!" her uncle snarled. "You want to snivel for the life of some random ogre, that's your call. I needn't understand it. But this is Davro! How many did he slaughter under Rebaine's orders? How many more will he kill if we let him live?"

"He doesn't look like he's all that interested in killing anymore," she noted, gesturing at the surrounding vale.

"This is not up for discussion," Jassion said coldly. "And you need to learn to think with your head, rather than your heart."

Gales of uncontrolled laughter burst from Kaleb's throat. He doubled up, clutching his stomach, and only the wall kept him upright. "That, coming from you," he gasped when he could finally breathe, "is hypocrisy that even the gods must envy. I expect that you've carved out a place of honor in Vantares's domain, where the entire pantheon will come to learn at your newly angelic feet."

Even beneath the chain hauberk, in the dim light of the moon and stars, they saw the baron's shoulders tense. His hands, as he raised Talon, vibrated with suppressed emotion.

"You," Kaleb said far more seriously, "are not going to kill that ogre. It is, as you said, not open to discussion."

"And why might that be, sorcerer?" Jassion demanded. At least for the moment, he'd stayed his stroke. "Surely not because you're hoping to win more of my niece's misdirected favors?"

Mellorin gasped, and there was no telling whether the spots of crimson across her cheeks were birthed by embarrassment or fury-or perhaps both. Kaleb held out a pacifying hand but otherwise remained focused on the baron.

"Because, m'lord Cretin, if we can't locate Rebaine in any reasonable amount of time, we may have to come back and repeat my efforts to track his spells back from Davro. And for that, he has to be alive."

They heard Jassion's ragged breathing as he struggled to decide.

"Look around you," Kaleb continued. "Davro's obviously not going anywhere. Once we've dealt with Rebaine, you can always come back and do whatever you feel needs doing. But for now-think with your head."

Jassion, with an audible hiss, slammed Talon back into its sheath. He spoke no word to either of them as he headed toward the horses, leaving his companions to hurry in his wake. THe dark night and mountain trails made for treacherous, nerve-racking travel, but they could not afford to make camp too near Davro's vale. It seemed unlikely that the ogre would come after them once he awoke, but the beast knew this terrain better than they, and it wasn't a risk any of them cared to take. The thought of a single sentry meeting up with him, while the others slumbered unawares, was the stuff of nightmares.

Albeit very short nightmares.

Jassion had gone some ways ahead, seeking a hollow or a clearing broad enough for them to bed down, and Kaleb took the opportunity to bring his mount alongside Mellorin's own palfrey.

"Could you really kill him?" he asked gently. She, at least, did him the courtesy of not pretending confusion.

"I don't know," she said with a sigh. "I don't even know if I actually want him dead. But I have to see him pay for what he did. I know that you and Jassion are planning to see that that happens, and I want to help-or at least to be there."

"Because of what he did to Imphallion? Or for abandoning you?"

"It's all the same thing," she insisted with a sidelong glare-one that answered the question far more truthfully than her words. Kaleb chose not to pursue it further.

"Thank you for, um, for back there," she said then, with a vague wave back the way they'd come.

Again he smiled at her. "For what? I was just following the most rational course."

"Of course you were," she said stoically, and then she, too, broke into a smile. "But are you sure it wasn't maybe, just a little bit, to earn my 'misdirected favors'?"

"Hideously misdirected," he told her. "But for them, I'd have done far more."

Driven by a single shared thought, they leaned over the narrow gap between the horses. Lips pressed tightly together, they drank deeply of each other, and for once, nobody appeared from nearby to interrupt.