Shattered Dance

Valeria shook her head, sharp and short. She was making excuses.

The truth was much simpler. Valeria was born this way. No amount of wishing could change her.

Grania had finished nursing. Portia’s eyes asked and her arms stretched out, offering her to Valeria.

Valeria shook her head again, just as sharp as before. She turned back to her mother. “Will you take her? Just until we see what’s happening in Aurelia?”

“That would be sensible,” Morag said. “Unless her father objects.”

“He won’t,” said Valeria. At least, she thought, not to that. He would agree that Grania was safer in Imbria than at the heart of whatever was coming. What he would say to Valeria’s making the decision without him…

She would face that when it came. They had the journey. She could still see him happy, delighting in his child. Before the clouds rolled in. Before the world’s weight was on them again, as sooner or later it always seemed to be.

Chapter Ten

Kerrec found his daughter fascinating and somewhat terrifying. She was so small and so utterly dependent on her elders, and yet the patterns that took shape around her promised to be as wide as the world.

Even more terrifying was what happened to his heart when he held her in his lap. He was a cold creature—all his passion was given to his art and to Valeria. Even his father’s magic had not been enough to give him a warm heart.

When he looked at his daughter, he burned so hot he did not recognize himself. He had heard of people who would die for their children—women usually, mothers possessed of a love so fierce there was no end to it. He had thought those claims exaggerated until he held this mite of a thing in his hands, wet and squalling from her mother’s womb, and knew they were a dim shadow of the truth.

Time’s passage did not lessen this feeling at all, but it did teach him to contain it. From being so full he could hardly think, he advanced to merely being besotted. Eventually he supposed he would simply be madly in love, and that would be the way of it for as long as he was alive.

Madly in love, he could understand. He had that for Valeria. He did his best to see this in a similar light, if only to make the rest of life easier.

He had traveled the road from the Mountain so often that it was nearly as familiar as the way from his rooms in the school to the stallions’ stable. But Grania’s presence in her grandmother’s wagon made it all seem new. He was more alert than he had ever been, more watchful for any sign of danger.

He could laugh at himself, recognizing the stallion’s instinct to protect his offspring, but his wariness was no less for that. He had been ambushed on this road before and carried off to torments he would never forget, no matter how old the scars were or how thoroughly they had healed.

Nothing like that would happen now. Those enemies were dead, and their plot in the end had failed. Whatever new evil was brewing, the riders were no longer cursed with naiveté. They would never be caught off guard again.

As a First Rider, Kerrec lent his magic to the working of wards and his strength to sustaining them. By the third day out from the Mountain, the spells were strong enough to stand on their own. No one rider needed to watch over them.

All the while he focused on protecting the caravan, he was aware under his skin of his lover and her mother and his daughter whom they guarded. A riders’ caravan had never brought women who were not Valeria with it before, let alone a baby. Kerrec had thought that some of the riders would grumble, but they were almost as besotted with Grania as he was.

There was always someone riding beside the wagon or even sitting in it, hovering over the baby and, when she was not riding among them, Valeria. Grania was never alone and never unprotected. Her mother and grandmother slept with her at night and guarded her by day with an intensity that began to make Kerrec uneasy.

Between those two and himself, Kerrec would give little for the chances of anyone who presumed to lay a hand on Grania. But there was more to it than that.

They knew something. He wanted to believe they were not hiding it from him deliberately, but at camp in the evenings, Valeria had little to say though she was perfectly willing to join with him in other ways than words. Her mother was preoccupied with the nurse and the baby. No one else knew there was anything to notice.

He resolved to wait them out. Whatever it was, it would not strike the caravan without raising the alarm.

To be sure of that, Kerrec heightened the defenses with a portion of the magic he had from his father. Now the earth was on the alert and the land was armed. Whatever came would have to contend with the deep magic of the empire as well as the stallions and their riders.

The working came wonderfully easily. Horse magic and imperial magic flowed together. They were all one. There was no division within them.

Kerrec had not expected that. As always, the Mountain strengthened some powers and suppressed others. He had been growing unawares, becoming something quite other than he had been before.

It was not a frightening prospect, though it fluttered his heart somewhat. There was a profound rightness in it. As he rode out of the mountains, he basked in magic that was whole and more than whole.

He would never take it for granted again. Nor would he forget that the higher his fortunes rose, the lower they could fall.

Valeria could feel Kerrec watching her. She had not wanted to worry him unnecessarily, but he was too perceptive. He knew she was keeping something from him.

He would not ask. When they lay together, he said nothing but a murmur of endearments. Time and again, she meant to say something, but she let each moment pass. She was a coward and she knew it, but she could not seem to help herself.

The longer she waited, the harder it was to break the silence. She had to do it soon. The days were passing and the road was growing shorter. The time would come when Morag left the caravan and turned toward Imbria. Grania would go with her—but Grania’s father would quite naturally want a say in it.

The night before Morag was to go, Valeria sat up late with her. The nurse snored softly in the tent.

It was a clear night, starlit and warm. Valeria rocked Grania in her lap. “I swear,” she said, “she smiled at me today. It wasn’t gas pains, either.”

“No doubt,” said Morag. “She’s waking to the world as they all do. She knows her mother, too.”

Valeria’s mood was as changeable as summer weather. It clouded swiftly and completely. “Does she? How long will that last?”

“I’ll make sure she doesn’t forget.”

“Maybe it will be only a few days,” Valeria said. “Maybe a week. Or two. Just a little while.”

“Maybe,” Morag said.

Valeria resisted the urge to clutch Grania to her breast. That would only alarm her and set her crying. “Gods. What are we doing?”

“Keeping her safe,” said Morag. “One thing we can say for all those royal and noble conspirators. Unless they need fodder for their wars, they seldom trouble to notice the lower classes. As long as we keep our taxes paid and our heads down, they stay out of our way.”

Valeria nodded reluctantly. “What’s another peasant’s brat? Even if they knew to look for her, they wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Wouldn’t they?”

Valeria started violently. Grania woke and opened her mouth to wail. Kerrec gathered her up and crooned at her. She subsided, staring rapt at his firelit face. After a moment she crooned back.

Valeria was not breathing. Kerrec knelt and then sat beside her, careful not to jostle the baby. Grania gurgled at him.

That was a smile. Even Morag could not fail to see it.

It gave Valeria little joy. Her heart stabbed with guilt.

Kerrec looked up from his daughter’s face to her mother’s. His gaze was level. “I think you have something to tell me,” he said.

Valeria swallowed. Her throat was dry. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have—I have this terrible habit of—”

“Yes,” he said. “What is it? What do you see?”

“Unmaking,” she said baldly.

There was a brief, perfect silence. Then he said, “Ah.” Only that.