Nwah hated Haven the moment she smelled it—which had been earlier this morning, back when thick woods still lined the road Kade, Winnie, and she had traveled to arrive here. First had been the acidic tang of hot steel from the smithy shops that raked the back of her throat, followed closely by the overpowering stench of human refuse that clogged her snout. The dense scent of burning wood brought up primal fears from places she’d rather not consider, and finally had come the rotting smell of discarded food soon to be slopped to pig-stock or just tilled back into the ground.
It was the last one she deemed the worst.
The woods she’d grown up in took care of its meat well before it rotted; the bulk eaten by crows, red-beaked buzzards, or other, bigger scavengers, the rest left for ants, beetles, and bore worms. The idea of purposely throwing food away became more distasteful the closer they got to the city.
:Are you all right?: Kade had asked while they padded over the hardpacked road.
:I’m fine,: she replied, knowing even then that Kade could feel her lie.
To his credit, he didn’t call her on it. Not then, anyway.
Regardless, it wasn’t Nwah’s fault that the fur around her neck stood on its end, and it wasn’t Kade or Winnie’s fault that they couldn’t understand that a city like Haven was no place for a proper kyree.
By late afternoon, however, the three of them had journeyed through the rings of the city to stand at a trellis gate that led to the Collegium.
For Nwah, the raw stillness of the street was disquieting, but thankfully so. The trek through the outer rings of Haven had been hard, and she was as tired as she was dirty. She wanted nothing more than a quiet corner where she could catch her breath and take care of her matted pelt.
Then, perhaps, could come a full belly and a languid sleep.
But there was still this to do, and she was still anxious.
The city grew tall and tight here, the buildings, pushed together, seemed to press on her, and what alleys lay between those buildings were paved with rock and tiles such that there was no bare ground to walk on. The gate was fancy, clearly wrought by a smithy of high quality, its sharp reliefs painted over in thick black coats that reflected the afternoon light. At least the year was nearly in autumn, so the air was cool and the sounds of the Harvest Fair celebration thankfully distant.
“What is it?” the guard said as he approached the gate. Nwah caught the scent of malted drink, though not as heavy as with most in the outer areas of the city.
“He’d like to apply to Healer’s College,” Winnie said.
The guard’s response was as much laugh as grunt. He turned to yell at his partner, “Hey, Harve! This grimy sod thinks he’s a Healer!”
:I don’t like him,: Nwah said.
:Don’t judge,: Kade replied. :It’s—:
:Harvest Fair,: Nwah snapped, knowing she was being too sharp, but not caring. :I know.:
As if a festival should make a difference.
Even after years with Kade, humans were hard to understand.
The two of them, Winnie and Kade, had jabbered incessantly about Harvest Fair for the past several days, though, saying it was a time when people came together to enjoy being part of the city and give thanks for their bountiful summer. Kade said even his parents, who lived a good distance from others, celebrated their crops with pies, music, and prayer, and Winnie exalted over market places in Tau that had been full of everything from handcrafted tools to exotic roots. She babbled on about music and parades. There would be parties, she said, and rituals. Plays and concerts would be held. Much gaiety would ensue.
Haven was the capital city, after all. Anything could happen.
Winnie even laughed at Kade’s expression when she said they might dance.
Nwah was from the forests, though. To her, community meant curling against the weight of her mother in the warmth of their den, or the aura of safety brought by the pack. Or, in those rare moments she let herself recall the magic she’d used to bring the animal horde together, Nwah recalled how the presence of each animal felt in her casting, unique and individual while making the whole.
Maybe that was what Harvest Fair was, she’d thought at one point.
Walking through the festivities, however, Nwah decided this was most definitely not what Harvest Fair was. Instead, the festival seemed nothing more than a reason for the entire city to go wild as a flea-bit boar.
Just getting through the outskirts had frayed her nerves.
Traversing the maze of alleyways and gates that followed laid a stifling sense of confinement onto her already overwhelming mess of anxieties.
She couldn’t imagine how people lived like this.
Each step of their way toward the Collegium made it feel more and more as though they were walking into an inescapable labyrinth, which, of course, caused her mind to race over even more horrible probabilities.
What if the guard detained them?
What if they shackled Kade rather than accepted him?
What if none of them could get out of Haven, or worse, Nwah thought as they stood at the trellis, what if Kade was accepted and they had to stay here?
What would Nwah do if she had to choose?
They’d been together so long. She couldn’t imagine leaving him.
The taste of magic in Haven was disconcerting, too.
Nodes and the lines crossed the place like an invisible cloud, their bittersweet scent tangling in her senses. They seemed fresher than others, perhaps younger, but that didn’t make sense to her, and the uncertainty made Nwah even more aware of what she didn’t know about her Gift.
As they’d walked, she found herself daydreaming in their mix without any conscious thought.
Which was something else to worry about.
What if she made a mistake?
What if she lost control?
The second guard glanced up, took in the road grime covering the three travelers, and broke out in deep laughter. “Looks more like a ditch digger to me.”
“And, yet, I’ve come to apply to Healers’ Collegium,” Kade finally spoke up.
“He’s got the Gift,” Winnie added, extending her jaw as though she was looking for a fight.
It had been her idea that Kade come to Haven. “It’s the best college in Valdemar,” she’d argued. “It’s where you belong.”
The guard’s muscular arms crossed over his chest, and the glint in his eyes grew as sharp as the dagger sheathed in his thick belt. The dusty blue tunic of his dress uniform seemed to rise.
“I’d say the mutt’s the only one of you that knows how to heel,” he said, glancing at Nwah.
The fur on her shoulders ruffled, and she fought an urge to leap at the gate.
“She’s a kyree, sir,” Kade said.
“I know what it is,” the guard snapped back. “Regardless, I think Dean Teren has better things to spend his time on.”
“How’s about a little test?” Kade said, motioning the guard. “Give me your hand.”
The guard frowned.
“The nail’s ingrown, isn’t it?” Kade said of the thumb as he motioned the guard to extend his arm.
“Fancy findings don’t make you a medicine man,” he replied.
Still, he put the hand through an open gap.
:I could give him a good clawing if you really want something to work with,: Nwah said.
Kade’s lips curled upward, but he just lifted the guard’s thumb to get a better look.
“It’s going to burst to gangrene if we don’t take care of it,” he said, running his finger over the red skin.
Kade removed a folded leaf from a pouch on his belt that contained the paste of lavender and rosemary he had concocted on the road.
“This will soothe the pain,” he said, rubbing it in and letting his Gift carry farther. “But you’ll need more than I can do simply standing here. You should see an apothecary before it gets out of control.”
The guard flexed his thumb.
“I’ll be damned,” he said, moving it without effort.
The gate opened with a squeal.
“Just the young man,” the guard said when Nwah and Winnie stepped forward to join Kade.
“But they’re with me,” Kade replied.
“Staff’s thin enough with the festival on,” the guard said. “If you’re making the application, you’re making it alone.”
Kade looked at Nwah, then Winnie. His confusion struck Nwah deep in the bones his Gift had once knit together. He wanted to be a Healer more than he could express, yet he didn’t want to leave them behind.
“Go on,” Winnie said.
:Winnie’s right,: Nwah said. :You’re too close to stop now.:
Kade smiled, relieved.
:Come and get us when you’ve passed,: Nwah added, hoping Kade felt her confidence. Kade was a true Healer. He would pass whatever tests they could give him.
A moment later the trellis slammed shut, and after the guard retook his post, Nwah stood alone with Winnie.
The sensation was like dead air.
Sounds of footsteps and conversation seeped in from the distance, and the early fall breeze still moved, but with Kade now delivered to the Collegium, Nwah wasn’t sure what to do next.
Winnie bit her fingertip. “I hope he makes it.”
:Of course he’ll make it,: Nwah snapped, touching a ley line to enable their MindSpeak. :Why wouldn’t he make it?:
Winnie shrugged and looked up at the tightly packed buildings where nobles lived.
A child scampered across a rooftop, carting messages to the elite.
:You’re the one who drove him to come here,: Nwah said, suddenly angry. :Now you don’t believe in him?:
She glanced past the trellis gate where Kade had disappeared.
:I know,: she said. :I’m not really worried . . . it’s just that he’s so . . . different.:
Nwah gave a disgruntled chuff. It was a sound that other kyrees would have taken as something like “get away,” which wasn’t quite right, but which seemed to say what was needed. Human language was so limited.
Winnie wasn’t wrong to fear for Kade, but the problem wasn’t that he was different so much that he was too trusting.
Nwah saw something more then.
She saw it in the lines drawn on Winnie’s face.
Winnie was worried for herself as much as she was for Kade.
She clearly loved him in her way, but she had given up her place in Tau in order come with him, and now she was alone and waiting to hear the verdict on the young man she’d fallen for.
Nwah saw that.
And in one way she understood—hadn’t she, just a few moments before, worried about whether she could stay in Haven if Kade was accepted?
Still, to doubt Kade was to betray him.
If Winnie couldn’t see that, she didn’t deserve him.
:I know what his Gift is,: Nwah said. :He will be accepted.:
“Yes,” she said aloud. “But sometimes who you are is more important than what you can do.”
:That makes no sense,: Nwah said.
:I know,: Winnie replied.
A collection of three Adepts approached the gate, clearly having come from the festivals. They chattered rapid-fire as they neared, their footsteps scraping the pavement with pedestrian monotony.
Nwah and Winnie stepped aside as the guard opened the gate.
:Come on,: Winnie said, breaking their silence. :Let’s see the Fair.:
Then she briskly stepped back along the path they’d come from.
Nwah grumbled, but followed. Kade would kill her if anything bad happened in the city.
A few minutes later, they found themselves back in Nwah’s worst nightmare.
The streets were clogged with people who talked and danced and moved so fast she had to clench her muscles just to keep from jumping. Boots kicked too near her nose, and countless legs swung too close by her flanks. Skirt hems swished in blazes of color. Carts drawn by cattle pushed through the crowd, their drivers calling out warnings, their spinning wheels clattering close enough that Nwah was constantly pulling her tail tight and skittering left and right in self-defense.
Wine and ale flowed like water.
Voices called from so many directions and in so many languages that her ears couldn’t swivel fast enough, and never-ending strains of horns and lutes played in crescendos that made it impossible to tell where anything was coming from. The banging of drums pounded in her head. Odors of incense and roasting meat assaulted her nose.
There’d been a game of hurlee playing in the distant fields that brought loud cheers and seemed to incite fisticuffs and foul tempers. The game itself made no sense to Nwah, but Winnie had been so interested it caused her to be unable to walk straight.
Without warning, a clanging bell pealed nearby, and Nwah nearly jumped out of her skin.
Survival in the woods had taught her that any tiny movement or nuance of scent could be the difference between life and death, but now everything that happened was like a hammer blow to some part of her.
:I need to find a nook so I can work on my coat,: she said as Winnie led them into the morass of humanity.
Winnie ignored her, of course.
Winnie was a good woman overall, but she was young and often thoughtless. Throughout their trip, ignoring Nwah was sometimes Winnie’s strongest gift, and now that they were at the Harvest Fair, that gift was in full force.
“Ah, damn!” came the ragged voice of a man who, out of nowhere, nearly tripped over Nwah. He saved himself but sloshed hoppy ale over the lip of his tankard to spill on her back.
Nwah growled and unfurled a claw as he stumbled away.
“Calm down,” Winnie said, laughing as Nwah shook liquid from her fur.
But, as the man disappeared, Nwah felt anger build.
She took the moment to clean the claw and felt a tingle of magic flow over her shoulders. She’d wanted to strike. Wanted to feel the release that came with sinking claws and teeth into flesh.
Her heart pounded hard as she imagined the taste of blood until, with a nervous shiver, she stopped herself.
It would have been so easy, she thought.
So easy to lose control.
For a fleeting moment, she recalled an image of Maakdal, the kyree male she’d paired with prior to this trek, standing firm and bold on a barren cliff, his body musky and strong. She sensed firm forest peat under her feet then, and the feeling of the moon above, felt the sharpness of nighttime air in her chest.
“Isn’t this the most amazing nightshift?” Winnie said without notice as she flitted to an open-air tent across the way. She held a swath of golden fabric across her midriff and spoke in the breathy way she had when she wanted to attract attention.
The weaver gave Winnie a sideways glance that brought Nwah’s immediate appreciation.
Winnie left the garment and stepped to the next stall.
“Aren’t these the ripest melons you’ve ever seen?”
As if any melon could make a reasonable meal.
“Ooooh, look at those carvings!” she squealed as she held her hands to her cheeks. “It’s like they were cut by Master Mohan himself!”
Nwah quieted another instinctive growl.
She remembered Mohan’s shop from her time in Tau. He wasn’t that good.
Suddenly, the crowd parted, and a gleam of pure white drew Nwah’s attention. It’s a horse, Nwah thought, but she knew immediately it was like no horse she’d ever seen. It was tall and muscled, pure white with eyes that burned in hues of cerulean depth. Its gait came to her then, a clopping ring as clear as river water, its timing as perfect as the wingbeat of an owl in open sky. Nwah felt a bend in the magical net around her, a pull firm like the press of a sun-warmed rock against the nodes.
Atop the horse was a rider, a young woman of clear complexion and wearing a spotless white tunic embroidered with silver patterns at the collar. Her hands were long and thin, the expression on her face calm and patient as the festival crowd parted before her.
A Companion, Nwah thought, her mind stunned.
A Companion ridden by a Herald.
As they made their way, the Companion turned her crystalline blue gaze to Nwah, and it felt as though time stopped and she’d been laid bare. Her sense of magic froze in her throat, and every hair in her pelt was suddenly vibrating in an invisible way that made it seem as if nothing existed but the two of them.
The Herald patted her Companion’s shoulder, and the Companion turned away.
Slowly, as the rider headed toward the city proper, Nwah’s senses returned.
“Did you see that?” Winnie asked.
Nwah hesitated, uncertain what she was feeling.
As their reputation had grown within their Pelagirs homeland, Nwah had heard people talk about her and Kade as if they were Companion and Herald, usually with a sense of irony or caustic wit—as in, who do they think they are? But, regardless, that idea was ridiculous. A Companion’s bond to a Herald was something of legends, steadfast and pure. A Companion, she’d always heard, chose a Herald, and, if anything, it had been Kade who had chosen Nwah back when he had pulled her dying body from under the bramble briars.
:She was beautiful,: Nwah finally said.
:They both were,: Winnie replied, giggling at first but then actually noting the state Nwah was in. :Are you all right?:
:I’d heard stories of Companions,: Nwah said. :But this is the first one I’ve ever seen.:
:Ah,: Winnie said. :That makes sense then. Don’t worry. It gets easier.:
Nwah didn’t reply.
As ripples in the nearby magic lines echoed in her mind, a wave of embarrassment passed over her.
Somewhere deep inside, she’d been proud of those comparisons, because, unlike whatever Kade and Winnie had, she could always fall back on the strength of their connection, could always comfort herself with the fact that she could feel Kade’s thoughts so strongly she sometimes thought she could hear them. It was something special they had. She knew Kade in ways she knew no other person. Yet, until now she’d never really let herself see how their bond itself made her feel important.
The strength of the Companion’s presence and the gentle grace that passed between Companion and Herald had changed that.
They made her feel smaller. Weak.
That sensation of connection gave her a sense of just how limited her relationship to Kade was.
The Companion was more than beautiful, Nwah realized then. She was overwhelming and otherworldly. She was awesome in the full meaning of the word. Recalling the intensity of the Companion’s gaze brought Nwah a fresh burst of discomfort about everything from her mere existence to the state of her coat.
I could never be like that, she thought to herself. I could never be that strong.
Without realizing it, she thought about Kade then.
Tried to imagine what it would feel like to talk to him now.
How deep is deep? she thought.
How strong is strong?
She pulled on magic that lay in the nodes around her, and by reaching across the city, felt power pool in her solar plexus as she separated from her body and soared over Haven’s huts and clay buildings, over its open firepits of roasting beef and pork, and over fields of dancing people, laughing people, and drinking people holding games and rituals and all the other things that thankful people might hold.
Finally, after Nwah crossed walls and streets, and twisted through windows and around doors, she found him.
Kade stood before a board of haggard-looking regents whose faces showed they were unhappy to have received his application when they could be out celebrating Harvest Fair. Their faces were drawn and lined. Their robes and tunics of green and gold were pressed and clean despite the time of day.
She felt the tone then, too.
Disappointment.
Shame.
Loss.
They were Kade’s emotions. Kade’s reactions.
He had failed entrance. He wasn’t going to attend Healer’s college.
For a moment Nwah’s heart gave a selfish leap. We won’t need to live here, she thought, and was immediately ashamed of herself.
As she listened to the council’s edict, she saw what was really happening.
To the people at the Collegium, Kade, standing before them in rags worn from the trail and with a face still too young to take seriously, was just a straggler. A nobody of less-than-commoner birth. He had no sponsor, no one to care. The faculty saw him as nothing but a wayward urchin, dirty from the road.
Sometimes, she remembered the low timber of Winnie’s voice, who you are is more important than what you can do.
Anger boiled inside Nwah.
She smelled disgust and tasted revulsion.
It’s not fair, she thought.
Then she was back in her body, panting and shaking amid the rancid smells and fervid motions of the Harvest Fair crowd.
She was suddenly both very tired and very hungry. Her head hurt, and she was so sensitive she felt the weight of every whisker in her body. She felt horrible, sad, and incredibly angry.
Her hackles rose with involuntary rigidity.
A distance away, over the din of the festival, a drumming and a general roar of voices rose.
People turned to the ruckus.
An amplified voice rose to call a gathering.
“Come on!” Winnie said, reaching to pull Nwah along. “It’s a show!”
Nwah couldn’t shake her anger, but she followed Winnie anyway because there was nothing else to do.
They took a position at the front of a crowd that developed around two performers—a robust woman in bright greens and blues and a thinner whippet of a man who had taken a place against one of the outermost walls that encircled the city and who was dressed in tight-fitting apparel of equally gaudy red and green.
An acrobat, Nwah saw. And a barker.
The acrobat was a young man, lithe and graceful in his body suit. He raced across the grounds, then bounced, jumping and flipping several times before finishing with a flying cartwheel and a somersault from which he bounded upward to a pirouette and a bow.
The flowing routine brought great cheers from the crowd.
“Ladies and gentlemen, and everything in between,” the barker called. “The Great Marten flies through the sky for you now, unaided by magic or mind spells, unprotected by either net or any sense of caution!”
Cheers rose again, and the Great Marten, flashing a toothy grin, climbed like a cat up the side of a high-walled wagon, whereupon he did a back flip to land on a bare patch of ground.
Cheers came again, this time accompanied by wild clapping and a round of raised tankards.
The barker, cheeks reddened to match the color of her curly hair, removed a hat from her head and passed it around as, this time, the acrobat ran directly toward the city wall and defied gravity by climbing up the sheer surface with a motion that was half leap and half sprint. He managed three heights of a man before he grabbed a hand rest and flipped himself the rest of the way to the top of the wall, where he teetered precariously, drawing gasps that Nwah saw were earned more through showmanship than any real danger.
Then the acrobat seemed to catch his balance and rose up.
As he stood, arms outstretched and with a flamboyant expression, the people around Nwah began to clap a steady beat.
Clap . . . clap . . . clap . . . clap . . .
“Jump!” one man yelled.
“Jump!” a young girl beside him called.
As the people clapped, Nwah’s senses settled again.
The heartbeat of the communal rhythm grew inside her, and in a flash, she finally understood how a moment like this could serve to bring people together. Their fear was shared even if some understood the game that was being played. Their enjoyment was universal, their encouragement combined. There is something here, she thought. Something she needed to understand better if she wanted to truly know Kade.
Her gaze went to the faces around her, all tilted up to the acrobat, and she thought about Kade.
She felt a niggling on the ley line then, the gentle pull on a node.
The disturbance was faint, yet there.
Coming from somewhere nearby.
From the woman, perhaps?
From the acrobat?
She didn’t understand what was happening, but she’d heard the barker’s claim that no magic was helping the acrobat. Yet her heightened senses told her that magic most definitely was here.
She focused on the sensations.
She opened her nostrils and hunched her shoulders as she touched a ley line, and magic, tasting sweet like grass, flowed to pool in her mind.
On the wall, the acrobat bent, then leaped, twisting his body as he turned in the free air.
The people gasped a collective breath.
Nwah touched the magic the barker had been casting and saw it wasn’t there to protect the acrobat from a fall, nor was it magic to make him fly true. Instead of being designed to pass fakery over the audience, the spell was there to blur the acrobat’s thoughts, there to hide the existence of something else.
As the acrobat hit his apex, Nwah peeled the spell away.
As the acrobat fell toward the ground, she found the unprotected core of thought it had been shielding.
Images and memories flooded over her. Remnants of conversations, snippets of agreements made, and payments given. The layout of maps, and a plan hatched to enter a chamber and pour poison into a nightstand cup. She couldn’t see the intended victim, but part of Haven showed outside the window in this forethought.
The man was an assassin.
He was planning to kill someone.
Surprised at Nwah’s intrusion, the barker gave a start, and the acrobat, in midair, suddenly lost control.
The crowd’s fearful call rose to a fervor as the man hit with a sickening crunch.
Then the sound faded to silence, and no one moved.
The accident was clearly bad. One of the acrobat’s legs was shattered and an arm was bent underneath him.
Finally, he moaned in the ugly tones of someone who knew exactly how badly he was hurt, and Winnie, her fingers drawn to her lips in concern, moved forward to help.
Another person screamed, and others followed.
Amid the early chaos that broke out, a few gawkers came forward to help Winnie.
“Stop!” she called as one of the men tried to move the acrobat, but the sound of her voice faded as Nwah focused on the portly barker.
Rather than go to the acrobat’s aid, when she regained her composure, the barker unleashed a bolt of energy at the mangled acrobat.
Nwah instinctively threw as much magic between the barker and the acrobat as she could, deflecting the bolt to wildly scorch the city wall, and she raced toward the portly magician, understanding now that the barker was trying to kill the acrobat to protect their plan.
She leaped with a wild yowl that carried all the day’s frustration and anger. Her body crashed into the woman, and they tangled as they fell hard to the ground.
The barker managed to press her hand against Nwah’s flank and unleash another bolt that made her freeze in pain. But even knowing she was badly wounded, Nwah managed to sink her teeth into the fleshy part of the magician’s shoulder.
The taste of blood came sweet and metallic against her throat.
Her back claws raked her foe’s legs as her foreclaws pinned the woman to the ground until the magician used her girth to roll away.
Nwah tried to twist away, but the woman reversed her, and had her pinned.
Unbidden, Nwah’s magic broke free.
It flowed inside her, powerful and pure, filling her with its presence.
As the barker nearly suffocated her, Nwah called out. As the battle raged between her and the barker, birds came forward, and cattle, and market monkeys, and stray cats and dogs, and boar, and chickens and turkeys. All answered Nwah’s call, all leaping on the woman as she screamed, all biting, pecking, stamping until, finally, the barker struggled no more.
The animals faded into the background then, and, indeed, as Nwah lay damaged in the grime, it was only the presence of buzzards still circling in the sky above her that made Nwah certain her horde had even come at all.
Shocked gazes fell on the bloody body beside her.
She explored her wounds and found her flank burned and glistening, her pads torn and bloody.
She tried to rise, but collapsed in pain.
Her gaze went back to the humans surrounding her.
They were afraid of her now, and they wouldn’t understand what had happened. Perhaps they would wait for the guard to take care of their fears, but eventually they would sense her helplessness, and they would come for her. She saw it etched in their expressions. It was only a matter of time.
Across the way, Kade appeared, his face ashen.
:Are you all right?: he said, rushing to her side.
Her vision wavered, but she saw his face take a stern set.
:You need help,: he said.
Some in the crowd warned Kade to stay away, others urged him to kill her.
Instead, Kade put his hand on her side and suddenly Nwah once again felt the power of his gift. A closeness dripped into her. A golden heat brought her the smells and images of the family farm where he’d been raised, and the sound of his voice as he’d once sung to her in the barn he’d chosen as her sickbed.
His healing slipped into her as it had before, removing her pain, or maybe not so much removing it as overwhelming it.
:I’m sorry about the college,: she said.
Kade nodded, but continued working.
Yes, she thought as pain flared inside her again. It was Kade’s concern that overwhelmed the flare, not the flare that fell away.
:That’s your real Gift,: Nwah said weakly.
:What’s that?: Kade replied almost as if he wanted her to keep talking more than anything else.
:That you care so much,: Nwah said. She sent a smile into his mind.
:Only for you, you silly mutt,: Kade snapped back.
:I’m not a mutt.:
:I know exactly who you are,: Kade replied with such clarity that she thought her heart would burst.
Perhaps their connection wasn’t that of a Companion and a Herald, but they were connected, and that made all the difference.
A moment later he backed off.
:Can you stand?:
Nwah gathered her strength. :I think so.:
She stood, shaking but firm enough.
“Kill it!” the acrobat screamed with raw throat as he lay bleeding and unable to move. “You saw what that beast did to Shaval!”
Winnie, who still knelt beside him, punched the acrobat on the jaw, and he fell silent.
Some in the crowd turned to her.
:The acrobat is an assassin,: Nwah said, passing images to Kade.
:I see,: Kade replied. :I recognize the maps. He’s from Ancar.:
:I don’t know what that means.:
:I don’t either,: Kade replied.
As the crowd suddenly hushed, another voice replied.
:It means the Queen is going to want to speak with him.:
From the direction of the city, almost as if she had simply appeared in the area, came a Companion, as strong and as pure as the Companion Nwah had seen earlier. This one, however, was alone.
She came forward, her mane almost silver in the evening gloaming as it fell over her forehead, stopping as she stood before Kade.
Through their link, Nwah felt the Companion take him in.
She felt Kade’s confusion.
When the Companion glanced at Nwah, admiring Kade’s handiwork, the lines of magic bent around her, and a dread rose inside Nwah that was deeper and more terrifying than anything she’d ever felt.
No! she thought. Not Kade!
Limping forward in her weakness, she stood between Kade and the Companion and bared her teeth.
:There’s no need for that, little kyree.:
:Yes, there is,: Nwah said. :If he leaves me, I’ll die.:
:Of course you would,: the Companion replied. :The two of you are Lifebonded.:
Nwah’s gaze narrowed, and she felt her energy falling.
:But there can be room for three of us,: the Companion said.
:Three?:
:If you can manage it. Things will be different, though, and not all creatures are strong enough to share the focus of their love.:
As Nwah paused, the word Lifebonded settled over her. It felt right, and for a moment she was pleased merely to know there was a term for it.
Everything was still too confusing, though. Happening too fast.
She didn’t know what to think.
The Companion used the break to return her attention to Kade.
:Troubles are coming, Kade of the Southern Lands,: the Companion said. :And your Gift is clearly strong. I am named Leena, and I Choose you as my Herald-in-Training.:
:Choose me?: Kade said.
:Are you deaf?: Leena replied.
:But I was rejected at the—:
:The Collegium is known to make occasional errors in judgement.:
Kade swallowed, then looked at Nwah. :She has a Gift, too,: he said.
Leena glanced to the remains of the barker’s body.
:I’ve seen as much,: she said. :And, since she has no self-control, we’ve all felt as much, too. I’ll be interested to learn how a boy Healer and a kyree with nature magic came to be in such a bond, but probably no more interested than Darkwind will be to have a kyree in the Mages Collegium.:
:She can study here, too?: Kade said.
:We couldn’t leave her as she is, now, could we? Otherwise she’d be far too attractive to any BloodMage she ran into. I’d say you can blame only luck that you haven’t fallen prey to one already.:
:I don’t think I can live here,: Nwah replied, catching on to the argument.
:It will be all right, little kyree. The Queen has some very quiet corners, and you won’t need to stay in Haven throughout your studies. You’ll have plenty of time to take care of that coat.:
Nwah sat back, so tired her forelegs still shook, her body aching from everywhere at once. The idea of staying in Haven was still crushing. And, yet, an offer to study magic with a true Mage was something that felt right. And there was Kade, of course. He was Chosen now. She understood what that meant. But Leena knew Nwah’s bond with Kade was real. If she could find a way to stay here, she would not have to lose him.
She felt his hand on her shoulder and knew her answer without speaking it.
:My name is Nwah,: she said to the Companion.
“What’s happening?” Winnie said as she came to Kade’s side.
Kade looked at Leena and shrugged.
“This is Winnie,” he said to his Companion. “I love her, too.”
:And she has a Gift of her own,: he added. :Or at least a calling.:
The Companion blew a damp-sounding breath from her wide nostrils, and, as Nwah, Kade, and Winnie stood together, Leena’s tail gave a twitch that was large enough to qualify as the first break in composure Nwah had seen from a Companion.
:I suppose all families have their complexities,: she said, pausing again to take them in. :We’ll work them out. In the meanwhile, it’s time we take this man to the Palace. Nwah needs her rest, and the Queen will want to hear what you have to say.: