“Talk to me about something else, Gabe.” Rathna was fussing with things, and she knew it.
Tomorrow, she would meet Ferdinand and two others in Trellech. Two of their party from the Guard had gone ahead to set things up and put together a campsite. They’d take the portal to Paris, then to Basel, so she could get readings for both, then to Amsterdam. It wouldn’t be enough for what she needed. She still needed Ferdinand’s feel for the German portal near his family’s home to anchor it properly. But every point counted.
From Amsterdam, they’d take a train to Groningen. There, finally, someone would meet them with a carriage and supplies for the last leg of the trip. They were aiming for the south side of the Dollard, a bay that sat on the northern coast, a mile or two south from the tip of the bay, which had something of a tendency to flood. It would be two or three days of travel, depending on if they made their train connection and if the weather held.
They’d be a bare two miles from the German border, such as it was. That put them forty or so from Oldenberg and sixty from Bremen. A hundred and twenty-five from the nearest portal in Amsterdam itself. There was no quick way out if anything went wrong, not by land. The Guard had promised a ship that could plausibly cross the Channel on the northern coast. But even that was a faint hope if anything significant actually went wrong.
She shivered once, turning her back to the rest of the room as she went through the top of her dresser one last time. It was only after a moment that she remembered the mirror. Before she could turn around, she felt Gabe behind her, his hand hovering, then he murmured, “Bright lady.” Still one of his favourite endearments for her. He bent to kiss her, once he was sure he wouldn’t surprise her, and his arm went around her back, hand cupping her hip.
Rathna peered at the image in the mirror. “Talk to me, Gabe. About what you’re working on.” She lifted her free hand. “In a minute.”
“Bed, then. A bit of talking. Other things. I’m not wasting the opportunity.” The hand on her hip didn’t squeeze. Gabe wasn’t gauche about his affections, but he leaned into her, before giving her space to step back and come to bed. Their bedroom. The last time for who knew how long, if they were successful. She couldn’t think about if they weren’t.
By the time she joined him, Gabe had settled under the sheets. He’d somehow stripped both dressing gown and pyjamas off, leaving them over the stool on the far side of his bedside table. She did the same, more tidily, and turned back to bed, to see him watching her avidly as he pulled the sheets back for her to slip in beside him. He’d charmed them warm, bless the man.
“You spoil me.” It came out sharper than she meant. Rathna didn’t want anything sharp tonight.
Gabe didn’t appear to notice. He tucked the blanket up over her shoulder and settled on his side, where he could see her face. “As much as I can. Always.” He hesitated for just a moment, as if weighing what she’d do at the touch, the way he did with an unsettled horse, then brushed his fingertips against her cheek. “You’re all a tangle. With excellent reason.”
“How are you so calm?” It clicked for her, then, that he was. He’d had that restless uncertainty, the little stops and starts, for months. Thinking back, in the last week, as she’d launched into her final preparation, he’d gone still. The way he did when he duelled, when all his focus was on one thing, and one thing alone.
Gabe didn’t answer her, not then. He brushed his fingers along her cheek. “What have I been up to? The Council meeting on Wednesday was a shambles, but an informative sort of shambles.” He’d been invited up for the first time to make a report to the full Council, all of them who were available. They’d not had a chance to talk about it, and after all, it wasn’t the sort of thing Rathna could help much with directly. Alysoun was far more deft with the dynamics, Richard and Magni with the strategy.
“You and Mason and Witt, yes?”
“And Isobel, though she kept quiet. We were in the public rooms, of course. Only those chosen few get to go in the bulk of the keep.” Rathna had been there enough times, for the solstice presentations with Gabe’s parents, for a bit of the dancing and other festivities. She’d been cordially ignored by most of the Council, which was better than coming to their particular attention.
“And?” Rathna didn’t try to force herself to relax. That never worked, not ever. But she could slow her breath, let herself slip into feeling the room sing, the way she heard a portal. She’d attuned herself, over the years, to this room. To this manor house. Even before they’d lived here all the time.
“Huge row between the Fortiers. I gather they were due. Alexander wasn’t remotely surprised.” Livia Fortier was perhaps the most dangerous of the Council members from Rathna’s point of view. She had exceedingly sharp and nasty ideas about proper marriages for the Lords and Ladies of the land.
Alysoun had quipped once that it was at least partly because Livia thought she’d married beneath her own family’s heritage. The Fortiers might have come over in the Norman Conquest, and had a long history of service to the Crown, then to the Council, and always to the land magic. That wasn’t nearly good enough for the Alveys, as one of the First Families, who had a history that went back to Roman Britain, like the Edgartons.
She half-shivered again, but this was a familiar sort of fear and distrust. Livia had never acted against her, neither directly nor through gossip and innuendo, not like some people had. But if Livia ever realised that Rathna’s parents hadn’t had magic, not as Albion counted it, there would be chaos.
There was no denying Rathna’s own magic. It had been strong enough at twelve that she’d been plucked out of the London orphanage and sent off to Schola at thirteen. It had run deep and clear and potent enough that when Morah Avigail had come looking for any prospective apprentices, Rathna had been the only one selected out of three years of students. And her magic had served her well, ever since. It coiled around her hand, like a spinner worked with wool or silk or flax. Rathna had learned to give it shape, and she was confident in her skills as a Portal Keeper, with all the magics that went into that.
“And?” Rathna met Gabe’s eyes. He was still quiet, in a way he almost never was. All of him was focused on her. That was part of it. She liked him being able to pay attention to so many things at once. And it was certainly a joy, watching him with the children. He had an unerring ability to keep track of their favourite things of the moment, without getting hung up in what they’d liked best last week or last month. Always in the moment, except when he deliberately dove back into history and precedent.
“I talked about them with Alexander, after. His townhouse, that’s why I was so late back.” Gabe shrugged one shoulder. “He says they have a marriage made of constant challenge and competition, even though they play on somewhat different fields. There are few better fighters than Livia.”
“And Alexander would know. Being one of the others.”
“Just so. Though as he says, age and experience still give him the edge.” Alexander was a decade or so older than both Garin and Livia. She’d have worried he was getting too old for duelling and keeping his own skills sharp, except she’d seen him duel Gabe regularly, as well as Isembard, Garin’s younger brother.
“What was the argument about?”
“She wants to go and fight. On the Continent. And on one hand, she might do some good, but on the other, it’s generally a problem to send any Council Member into combat. At least without a specific good reason that supports the land magic here.” Gabe spread out his hand. “And we don’t exactly have that. I gather she thought about arguing her way into your little band of people, but she got talked out of it.”
Rathna grimaced and then shifted, to bury her head against Gabe’s chest. His arm immediately went around her back, one of his long legs stretching out against hers. “Hey.” He murmured it into her ear. “You know the people going with you are fantastic. Hand-picked. Papa and Kate vouch for them all. Both their skills and their attitudes.”
Two women Guards, who wouldn’t have been able to enlist, and two men who’d chosen to continue serving in the Guard but who were delighted to have this assignment. They’d been training together since January. Even Richard had proclaimed them entirely up to his standards. They’d be meeting two more from the Netherlands, to help with the supporting magical work, local knowledge, and to lend vitality if needed. And generally to monitor what was going on while Rathna and Ferdinand did the work. A modest sortie party, as it went.
“Kate went through it all with me. Back when they started training.” Kate was one of the steadiest of the Guard captains other than Richard, with an eye for solving complicated problems. Rathna had liked her since they’d first met, not long after Gabe had dragged her home in the midst of a costume party to meet his parents. “I know we’ve done everything we can.”
“You have. Everyone else has. You’ve done all the preparation possible.” Gabe swallowed hard. “Papa, and Geoffrey, and Alexander, and Isembard, and Giles, and - all the others we’ve consulted. They all made it through the Great War. No two wars are the same. You know what Uncle Magni says about that. But as much as any of us can be prepared, you are. You all are.”
Rathna nodded slowly, just breathing in the way Gabe smelled, since she couldn’t seem to pull herself away from his chest. He wasn’t broad-shouldered, he never had been, but everything there was muscle and strength. He smelled like the woods around Veritas, with a hint of sharp herbs from his favourite cologne, and the faint scent of old books. She breathed it in, let out a long breath, and then finally settled on her back. “Why are you so calm? You’ve been so - not. Something in the meeting?”
“Before that. I think.” Gabe rearranged a couple of pillows, pressing up against her side, and draping an arm over her waist above the sheet. “I think I was bouncing all over because I didn’t have a good sense of the whole picture. Caught in the trees, not seeing the whole forest, not for a long time.”
That made sense. Gabe had an amazing talent for pulling together dozens of different details into a swirling, cohesive whole. She’d seen him do it, over and over again. “And now?”
“I don’t know. Coming into spring, something snapped into place. The land is waking, and that matters. I’ve got plans to go walk the bounds in the New Forest with Geoffrey, see if he picks up some of the same things I have here, without hints.”
“Keep yourself busy?” Rathna said it hesitantly.
Gabe pushed himself up on his elbow, slipping his hand to brace on the other hand as he bent to kiss her. He took his time with it, all his best attention, and she let her own hand slide into his hair, wanting to soak it in. He finally pulled back, intense now. “You need to go. To save any lives you can. And prove that you’re utterly brilliant to anyone who might ever have doubts, for the rest of time.” He tilted his head. “Prove to them all that you’re magically much more terrifying than I am.”
He was ridiculous, but it made her smile. She tapped his cheek. “You’ll be all right without me?”
“I’ll manage. This is important. What you’re doing. What I’m doing. Both of us. I’ll miss you, every day, every time I get a chance to think about it. But we’ll have the journals. I’ll let you know how things are here, anything you want to know.”
“If the mirabiles come out in the woods.” They had been seen in the greening of the woods around May Day, the last decade, remarkably reliably.
“Tell them where you are, wish you home safely when it’s time. I’ll tell the bees all your news. All the country customs you tolerate.”
That made her laugh and tug him down. “Not just tolerate, you. I had no idea I’d end up here, but...” But there was nowhere she wanted to be but in this bed, with Gabe. In his life, for all the wild tears he went on, all the chaos he sometimes trailed in his wake. She wanted his laughter, his quickness, the way he never looked at her without his love shining out. “Send me off properly.”
Gabe threw his head back and laughed. “No lingering aches tomorrow. Everything else is permitted?”
“Everything else is encouraged.” She had no idea what she’d get out of him, if it would be charms and enchantments that made her moan with desire, or that left her quivering in dissolute pleasure. If it would be comforting or energetic. Whatever it was, she trusted he’d read her, what she needed, and give her his all. He always had.
She could hold on to that, whatever the future days held.