Leesha watched as Wonda and Gared faced off in the Corelings’ Graveyard, circling slowly. Wonda was taller than any other woman in the Hollow, including the refugees, but giant Gared dwarfed her regardless. She was fifteen, and Gared near to thirty. Still, Gared wore a look of intense concentration, while Wonda’s face was calm.
Suddenly he lunged, grabbing for her, but Wonda caught his wrist in one hand and pivoted, pressing his elbow hard with her other hand as she sidestepped and used the force of his own attack to throw him onto his back on the cobbles.
“Corespawn it!” Gared roared.
“Well done,” the Warded Man congratulated Wonda as she gave Gared a hand to help him up. Since he had begun giving sharusahk lessons to the Hollowers, she had shown herself to be his best student by far.
“Sharusahk teaches diverting force,” the Warded Man reminded Gared. “You can’t keep using the wild swings you would against a coreling.”
“Or a tree,” Wonda added, bringing titters from many of the female students. The Cutters glared. More than a few of them had found themselves defeated by female students, something no man was used to.
“Try again,” the Warded Man said. “Keep your limbs in close and your balance centered. Don’t give her an opening.
“And you,” he added, turning to Wonda, “don’t grow overconfident. The weakest dal’Sharum still has a lifetime of training against your few months. They’ll be your true test.” Wonda nodded, her smile disappearing, and she and Gared bowed and began to circle again.
“They’re learning quickly,” Leesha said as the Warded Man came to join her and Rojer. She never trained with the other Hollowers, but she watched carefully each day as they practiced the sharukin, her quick mind cataloguing every move.
Again, Wonda threw Gared onto his back. Leesha shook her head wistfully. “It really is a beautiful art. It’s a shame its only purpose is to maim and kill.”
“The people that invented it are no different,” the Warded Man said. “Brilliant, beautiful, and deadly beyond reckoning.”
“And you’re sure they’re coming?” Leesha asked.
“There isn’t a doubt in my mind,” the Warded Man said, “much as I wish otherwise.”
“What do you think Duke Rhinebeck will do?” she asked.
The Warded Man shrugged. “I met him a handful of times in my Messenger days, but I know little of his heart.”
“There’s not much to know,” Rojer said. “Rhinebeck spends his hours doing three things: counting money, drinking wine, and bedding younger and younger brides, hoping one of them will bear him an heir.”
“He’s seedless?” Leesha asked in surprise.
“I wouldn’t call him that anyplace where it might be overheard,” Rojer warned. “He’s hung Herb Gatherers for less insult. He blames his wives.”
“They always do,” Leesha said. “As if being seedless somehow makes them less a man.”
“Doesn’t it?” Rojer asked.
“Don’t be absurd,” Leesha said, but even the Warded Man looked at her doubtfully.
“Regardless,” Leesha said, “fertility was one of Bruna’s specialties, and she taught me well. Perhaps I can win favor by curing him.”
“Favor?” Rojer asked. “He’d make you his duchess for it, and get the child on you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the Warded Man said. “Even if your herbs can awaken his seed, it could be months before there was any proof of it. We’ll need more leverage than that.”
“More leverage than an army of desert warriors on his doorstep?” Rojer asked.
“Rhinebeck will need to mobilize well before it comes to that, if he’s to have any hope of stopping Jardir,” the Warded Man said, “and dukes are not men apt to take such risks without great convincing.”
“You’ll have Rhinebeck’s brothers to contend with, as well,” Rojer said. “Prince Mickael will take the throne if Rhinebeck dies without an heir, and Prince Pether is Shepherd of the Tenders of the Creator. Thamos, the youngest, leads Rhinebeck’s guards, the Wooden Soldiers.”
“Are any of them likely to see reason?” Leesha asked.
“Not likely,” Rojer said. “The one to convince is Lord Janson, the first minister. None of the princes could find their boots without Janson. Not a thing goes on in Angiers that Janson doesn’t track in his neat ledgers, and the royal family delegates almost everything to him.”
“So if Janson doesn’t support us, it’s unlikely the duke will, either,” the Warded Man said.
Rojer nodded. “Janson is a coward,” he warned. “Getting him to agree to war …” He shrugged. “It won’t be easy. You may have to resort to other methods.” The Warded Man and Leesha looked at him curiously.
“You’re the ripping Warded Man,” Rojer said. “Half the people south of Miln think you’re the Deliverer already. A few meetings with the Tenders and the right tales spun at the Jongleurs’ Guildhouse, and the other half will believe it, too.”
“No,” the Warded Man said. “I won’t pretend to be something I’m not, even for this.”
“Who is to say you’re not?” Leesha asked.
The Warded Man turned to her in surprise. “Not you, too. It’s bad enough from the Jongleur eager for tales and the Tender blind with faith, but you’re an Herb Gatherer. Knowledge cures your patients, not prayer.”
“I’m also a ward witch,” Leesha said, “and you made me so. It’s honest word I put more store in books of science than the Tenders’ Canon, but science falls short of explaining why a few squiggles in the dirt can bar a coreling or do it harm. There’s more to the universe than science. Perhaps there’s room for a Deliverer, too.”
“I’m not Heaven-sent,” the Warded Man said. “The things I’ve done … no Heaven would have me.”
“Many believe the Deliverers of old were just men, like you,” Leesha said. “Generals who arose when the time was right and the people needed them. Will you turn your back on humanity over semantics?”
“It ent semantics,” the Warded Man said. “Folk start looking to me to solve all their problems, they’ll never learn to solve their own.”
He turned to Rojer. “Everything set?”
Rojer nodded. “Horses laden and saddled. We can leave when you’re ready.”
It had been over a month since spring melt, and the trees lining the Messenger road to Angiers were green with fresh leaves. Rojer held tightly to Leesha as they rode. He had never been much of a rider and generally mistrusted horses, especially those not hitched to a cart. Fortunately, he was small enough to ride behind Leesha without straining a beast too far. As with everything she turned her mind to, Leesha had mastered riding in short order, and commanded the horse with confidence.
It didn’t help his churning stomach that they were returning to Angiers. When he had left the city with Leesha a year ago, it had been as much to save his own life as to help her get home. He wasn’t eager to return, even alongside his powerful friends, especially when it meant letting the Jongleurs’ Guild know he was still alive.
“Is he overweight?” Leesha asked.
“Hm?” Rojer said.
“Duke Rhinebeck,” Leesha said. “Is he overweight? Does he drink?”
“Yes and yes,” Rojer said. “He looks like he swallowed the whole beer barrel, and it’s not far from the truth.”
Leesha had been asking him questions about the duke all morning, her ever-active mind already working on a diagnosis and potential cure, though she had yet to meet the man. Rojer knew her work was important, but it had been close to ten years since he had lived in the palace. Many of her questions taxed his memory, and he had no idea if his answers were still accurate.
“Does he sometimes have trouble performing abed?” Leesha asked.
“How in the Core would I know?” Rojer snapped. “He wasn’t the boy-buggering type.”
Leesha frowned at him, and Rojer immediately felt ashamed.
“What’s bothering you, Rojer?” she asked. “You’ve been distracted all morning.”
“Nothing,” Rojer said.
“Don’t lie to me,” Leesha said. “You’ve never been good at it.”
“Being on this road again has me thinking about last year, I guess,” Rojer said.
“Bad memories all around,” Leesha agreed, casting her gaze off to the sides of the road. “I keep expecting bandits to leap from the trees.”
“Not with this lot around,” Rojer said, nodding ahead of them to Wonda, who rode a light courser and had her great bow strung and ready in a sheath by her saddle. She sat up straight and alert, eyes sharp within her scarred face.
Behind them, Gared rode a heavy garron, though the giant man made the huge beast look a more normal size by comparison. His huge axe handles jutted up from either shoulder, ready at a moment’s notice. Trained demon hunters both, there was little to fear from mortal foes with them on guard.
But most comforting of all, even in daylight, was the Warded Man. He rode his giant black stallion at the lead of the small column, shunning idle talk, but his presence was a silent reminder that no harm could come to any of them while he was near.
“So is it the road that bothers you, or what lies at its end?” Leesha asked.
Rojer looked at her, wondering how she could just pick thoughts right out of his head.
“What do you mean?” he asked, though he knew full well.
“You never told me how you came to be at my hospit last year, beaten near to death,” Leesha said. “And you never went to the guard over it, or told the Jongleurs’ Guild you were still alive, even after they buried Master Jaycob.”
Rojer thought of Jaycob, Arrick’s former master who had been like a grandfather to him after Arrick died. Jaycob took him in when he had nowhere else to go, and put his own reputation in the hat to start Rojer’s career. The old man paid a heavy price for his kindness, beaten to death for Rojer’s crime.
Rojer tried to speak, but his voice caught, and tears filled his eyes.
“Shhh, shhh,” Leesha whispered, taking his hands and drawing them tighter around her. “We’ll talk about it when you’re ready.” He leaned into her, inhaling the sweet scent of her hair, and he felt himself grow calm again.
They were two days from the city, not far from where the Warded Man had first found Rojer and Leesha on the road, when he turned his horse and rode into the trees.
Leesha kicked her horse ahead, picking her way through the trees until she came alongside the Warded Man. With no natural path to follow, much less one wide enough for two, they had to continually shift and duck to avoid low-hanging limbs. Gared was forced to get down from his horse entirely and walk.
“Where are we going?” Leesha asked.
“To get your grimoires,” the Warded Man replied.
“I thought you said they were in Angiers,” she said.
“The duchy, not the city,” the Warded Man said with a grin.
The path soon widened, but still in a way that seemed natural to the untrained eye. Leesha was an Herb Gatherer, though, and knew plants better than anything.
“You cultivated this,” she said. “You felled trees and widened the path, then hid your work so it doesn’t seem a path at all.”
“I value my privacy,” the Warded Man said.
“It must have taken years!” Leesha said.
The Warded Man shook his head. “My strength has some uses. I can fell a tree almost as fast as Gared, and drag it off easier than a team of horses.”
They followed the secret path deep into the woods until it veered off to the left. Ignoring the clear path, the Warded Man turned right, and again plunged into the trees. The others followed, and when they pushed through the branches they gasped as one.
There, hidden in a hollow, was a stone wall, so covered in ivy and moss that it had been invisible until they were upon it.
“I can’t believe this is just sitting here, so close to the road,” Rojer said.
“There are hundreds of ruins like this in the forest,” the Warded Man said. “The trees reclaimed land quickly after the Return. A few are common Messenger stops, but others, like this one, have gone unnoticed for centuries.”
They followed the wall to a gate, ancient and rusted shut. The Warded Man took a key from his robes and inserted it in the lock, which turned with a smooth oiled click. The gates opened silently.
Inside was a stable that seemed collapsed from the front, but the rear half of the structure was intact and clear, with a large covered cart and more than enough space for the four horses.
“Miraculous that half the stable should survive the years so well, and the other half not,” Leesha noted with a grin, lifting some ivy out of the way to reveal fresh wards on the stable’s walls. The Warded Man said nothing as they brushed down the horses.
Like the rest of the compound, the main house was in ruins, the roof caved and looking decidedly unsafe. The Warded Man led them around the back to a servant’s house, still quite large by the standards of anyone raised in the hamlets. The place was half collapsed, like the stable, but the door the Warded Man led them through was heavy, thick, and locked.
The door opened into one great room, restored to function as a workshop. Warding equipment lay on every surface, along with sealed jars of ink and paint, various half-finished projects, and piles of materials.
There was a small cupboard by the fireplace. Leesha opened it to find one cup and one plate, one bowl and one spoon. A knife was stuck in a small cutting board by the cold pot hanging in the hearth.
“So cold,” Leesha whispered. “So lonely.”
“He doesn’t even have a bed,” Rojer murmured. “He must sleep on the floor.”
“I used to think I was alone, living in Bruna’s hut,” Leesha said, “but this …”
“Over here,” the Warded Man said, moving to a corner of the room with a large bookshelf. That got Leesha’s attention immediately, and she headed over.
“Are those the grimoires?” she asked, unable to keep the eagerness from her voice.
The Warded Man glanced at the shelf and shook his head. “Those are nothing,” he said. “Common wards and books, histories and basic maps. Nothing you can’t find in the library of any Warder or Messenger worth the name.”
“Then where …?” Leesha began, but the Warded Man moved over to a nondescript section of the floor and stamped his heel down hard in a precise spot. The board was on a fulcrum, and as one end dipped into a hollow in the floor, the other rose, revealing a small metal ring. The Warded Man grasped the ring and pulled, opening a trapdoor in the flooring, its edges uneven and filled with sawdust, making them indistinguishable from the surrounding floorboards.
He lit a lantern and led the way down the steps into a large basement. The walls were stone, and the room was cool and dry. There was a hall leading in the direction of the collapsed main house, but a giant stone block had fallen to bar the path.
Warded weapons lay stacked and hung everywhere. Axes, spears of varying length, polearms, and knives, all delicately etched with battle wards. Dozens of crank bow bolts. Literally thousands of arrows, stacked in gross bundles.
There were trophies of a sort, as well, demon skulls, horns, and talons, dented shields and broken spears. Gared and Wonda drew wards in the air.
“Here,” the Warded Man said to Wonda, handing her a bundle of arrows, delicate wards entwined along their wooden shafts and metal heads. “These will bite coreling flesh deeper than the ones in your quiver.”
Wonda’s hands shook as she accepted the gift. Speechless, she bowed her head, and the Warded Man bowed in return.
“Gared …” the Warded Man said, looking around as Gared stepped forward. He selected a heavy machete, its blade etched with hundreds of tiny wards. “You can hack through wood demon limbs like errant vines with this,” he said, handing the weapon to Gared hilt-first. Gared dropped to his knees.
“Get up,” the Warded Man snapped. “I ent the ripping Deliverer!”
“Ent callin’ you any names,” Gared said, keeping his eyes down. “All I know is I spent my whole life acting the selfish fool, but since you come to the Hollow, I seen the sun. I seen how I let my pride and my … lusts,” his eyes flicked to Leesha, just for an instant, “blind me. The Creator blessed me with strong arms to kill demons, not to take whatever I wanted.”
The Warded Man held out his hand, and when Gared took it, he pulled the man roughly to his feet. Gared weighed more than three hundred pounds, but he might as well have been a child.
“Maybe you seen the sun, Gared,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean I showed it to you. You’d lost your da just a day before. That’ll grow any man. Show him what’s important in life.”
He held out the machete again, and Gared took it. It was a huge blade, but it seemed little more than a dagger in Gared’s giant hand. He looked at the delicate warding in wonder.
The Warded Man looked at Leesha. “Those,” he pointed to a series of shelves at the far end of the room, “are the grimoires.” Leesha immediately moved toward the shelves, but he caught her arm. “I let you go there and we’ll lose you for the next ten hours.”
Leesha frowned, wanting nothing more than to pull her arm away and bury herself in the heavy, leather-bound tomes, but she suppressed the urge. This was not her home. She nodded.
“We’ll bring the books with us when we leave,” the Warded Man said. “I have other copies. Those will be yours to keep.”
Rojer looked to the Warded Man. “Everyone gets a gift but me?”
The Warded Man smiled. “We’ll find you something.” He moved over to the blocked corridor. The keystone that had collapsed from the archway looked to weigh hundreds of pounds, but he lifted it away easily, leading them to a heavy, locked door that had been hidden in the darkness.
He produced another key from his robes and turned it in the lock, opening the door and stepping inside. He touched a taper to a huge stand lamp by the door, and it flared to life, reflecting off large mirrors carefully placed around the room. Instantly the huge chamber was filled with bright light, and the visitors gasped collectively.
Carpets, rich and thick, woven in faded design from ages past, covered the stone floor. The walls were hung with dozens of paintings of forgotten people and events, masterworks in gilded frames, along with metal-framed mirrors and polished furniture. Treasures lay piled in rain barrels around the room, filled to bursting with ancient gold coins, gems, and jewelry. Machines of unknown purpose lay partially disassembled alongside great marble statues and busts, musical instruments, and countless other riches. There were bookshelves everywhere.
“How is this possible?” Leesha asked.
“Corelings care little for riches,” the Warded Man said. “Messengers picked the easily accessible ruins clean, but there are countless places they’ve never been, whole cities lost to demons and swallowed up by the land. I’ve tried to preserve whatever survived the elements.”
“You’re richer than all the dukes combined,” Rojer said in awe.
The Warded Man shrugged. “I have little use for it. Take whatever you like.”
Rojer gave a whoop and ran through the room, running his fingers through piles of coins and jewelry, picking up statuettes and ancient weapons. He played a tune on a brass horn, then gave a cry and ducked behind a broken statue, reappearing with a fiddle in his hands. The strings had rotted away, but the wood was still strong and polished. He laughed aloud, holding the prize up in delight.
Gared looked around the room. “Liked the other room better,” he told Wonda, and she nodded her agreement.
The gates of Fort Angiers were closed.
“During the day?” Rojer asked in surprise. “They’re usually open wide for the loggers and their carts.” He sat now in the driver’s seat of the cart from the Warded Man’s keep, pulled by Leesha’s horse. She sat beside him, in front of several bags of books and other items used to disguise the cart’s false bottom. The hidden hold was filled with warded weapons and more than a little gold.
“Maybe Rhinebeck’s taking the Krasian threat more seriously than we thought,” Leesha said. Indeed, as they drew closer to the city, they saw guards armed with loaded crank bows patrolling the walltop, and woodworkers carving arrow slits at the lower levels of the wall. Where the gate had once had a single pair of guards, now there were several, standing alert with their spears at the ready.
“Marick’s tale likely set things in a frenzy,” the Warded Man agreed, “but I’ll wager those guards are there more to prevent thousands of refugees from pouring into the city than they are to ward off any Krasian attack.”
“The duke couldn’t possibly refuse all those people succor,” Leesha said.
“Why not?” the Warded Man said. “Duke Euchor lets the Beggars of Miln sleep on the unwarded streets every night.”
“Ay, state your business!” a guard called as they approached. The Warded Man pulled his hood lower and drifted toward the back of the group.
“We come by way of Deliverer’s Hollow,” Rojer said. “I’m Rojer Halfgrip, licensed to the Jongleurs’ Guild, and these are my companions.”
“Halfgrip?” one guard asked. “The fiddler?”
“The same,” Rojer said, lifting the newly strung fiddle the Warded Man had given him.
“Saw you play once,” the guard grunted. “Who are the others?”
“This is Leesha, Herb Gatherer of Deliverer’s Hollow, formerly of the hospit of Mistress Jizell in Angiers,” Rojer said, gesturing to Leesha. “The others are Cutters come to guard us on the road; Gared, Wonda, and, er … Flinn.”
Wonda gasped. Flinn Cutter was her father’s name, a man killed in the Battle of Cutter’s Hollow less than a year earlier. Rojer immediately regretted the improvisation.
“Why’s he all covered?” the guard asked, pointing his chin at the Warded Man.
Rojer leaned in close, dropping his voice to a whisper. “He’s badly demon-scarred, I’m afraid. Doesn’t like people looking on his deformity.”
“It true what they say?” the guard asked. “Do they kill corelings in the Hollow? They say the Deliverer has come there, bringing with him the battle wards of old.”
Rojer nodded. “Gared here has killed dozens himself.”
“What I wouldn’t give to have my spear warded to kill demons,” one guard said.
“We’ve come to trade,” Rojer said. “You’ll have your wish soon enough.”
“That what you got in the cart?” the guard asked. “Weapons?” As he spoke, a few other guards walked back to inspect the contents.
“No weapons,” Rojer said, his throat tightening at the thought of them discovering the hidden compartment.
“Just looks like warding books,” one of the guards said, opening one of the sacks.
“They’re mine,” Leesha said. “I’m a Warder.”
“Thought he said you was an Herb Gatherer,” the guard said.
“I’m both,” Leesha said.
The guard looked at her, then at Wonda, then shook his head. “Women warriors, women Warders,” he snorted. “They’ll let ’em do anything out in the hamlets.” Leesha bristled at that, but Rojer laid a hand on her arm and she calmed.
One of the guards had moved back to where the Warded Man sat atop Twilight Dancer. Much of the stallion’s magnificent warded barding was hidden away, but the giant animal himself stood out, as did his cloaked rider. The guard moved in, trying to peek under the Warded Man’s hood. The Warded Man obliged him, lifting his head slightly so a sliver of light could reach under the shadows of his cowl.
The guard gasped and backed away, hurrying over to his superior, who was still speaking to Rojer. He whispered in the lieutenant’s ear, and his eyes widened.
“Clear the way!” the lieutenant shouted to the other guards. “Let them pass!” He waved them through, and the gate opened, allowing them passage into the city.
“I’m not sure if that went well or not,” Rojer said.
“What’s done is done,” the Warded Man said. “Let’s move quickly before word spreads.”
They headed into the bustling city streets, boardwalked to prevent corelings from finding a path to rise within the city’s wardnet. They had to dismount and lead the horses, which slowed things considerably, but it also allowed the Warded Man to virtually disappear between the horses and behind the cart.
Still, their passage did not go unobserved. “We’re being followed,” the Warded Man said at one point when the boardwalk street was wide enough for him to come up alongside the cart. “One of the guards has been drifting along in our wake since we left the gate.”
Rojer looked back and caught a glimpse of a city guard’s uniform just before the man ducked behind a vendor’s stall.
“What should we do?” he asked.
“Not much we can do,” the Warded Man said. “Just thought you should know.”
Rojer knew the mazelike streets of Angiers well, and took them on a circuitous route through the most crowded areas to their destination, hoping to shake the pursuit. He kept glancing over his shoulder, pretending to look appreciatively at passing women or vendors’ wares, but always the guard was there, just on the edge of sight.
“We can’t keep circling forever, Rojer,” Leesha said at last. “Let’s just get to Jizell’s before it starts to get dark.”
Rojer nodded and turned the cart directly for Mistress Jizell’s hospit, which quickly came in sight. It was a wide, two-story building, made almost entirely of wood, as were all the buildings in Angiers. There was a small visitors’ stable around the side.
“Mistress Leesha?” the girl minding the stable asked in surprise, seeing them pull up.
“Yes, it’s me, Roni.” Leesha smiled. “Look how you’ve grown! Have you been keeping to your studies while I was gone?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am!” Roni said, but her eyes had already flicked to Rojer, and then drifted on to Gared, where they lingered. Roni was a promising apprentice, but she was easily distracted, especially by men. Fifteen and full-flowered, she would already be married and raising children of her own if she had grown up in the hamlets, but women married later in the Free Cities, and Leesha was thankful for that.
“Run and tell Mistress Jizell we’ve arrived,” Leesha said. “I didn’t have time to write, and she may not have room for all of us.”
Roni nodded and ran off, and before they were done brushing down the horses, a woman shouted “Leesha!” Leesha turned, only to find herself smothered against Mistress Jizell’s prodigious bosom as the older woman swept her into a tight hug.
Just shy of sixty, Mistress Jizell was still strong and robust despite the heavy frame under her pocketed apron. A former apprentice of Bruna much as Leesha was, Jizell had been running her hospit in Angiers for more than twenty years.
“It’s good to have you back,” Jizell said, pulling back only after all the air had been squeezed from Leesha’s slender frame.
“It’s good to be back,” Leesha said, returning Jizell’s smile.
“And young Master Rojer!” Jizell boomed, sweeping poor Rojer into a similarly crushing embrace. “It seems I owe you thrice! Once for escorting Leesha home, and twice more for bringing her back!”
“It was nothing,” Rojer said. “I owe you both more than I can repay.”
“You can help work that off by playing your fiddle for the patients tonight,” Jizell said.
“We don’t want to put you out if there’s no room,” Leesha said. “We can stay at an inn.”
“The Core you can,” Jizell said. “You’ll all stay with us, and that’s final. We have a great deal of catching up to do, and all the girls will want to see you.”
“Now, who are your companions?” Jizell asked, turning to the others. “No, let me guess,” she said when Leesha opened her mouth. “Let’s see if the descriptions in your letters do them justice.” She looked Gared up and down, craning her head back to meet his eyes. “You must be Gared Cutter,” she guessed.
Gared bowed. “Yes’m,” he said.
“Built like a bear, but with good manners,” Jizell said, slapping one of Gared’s burly biceps. “We’ll get along fine.”
She turned to Wonda, not flinching in the least at the angry red scars on the young woman’s face. “Wonda, I take it?” she asked.
“Yes, mistress,” Wonda said, bowing.
“It seems the Hollow is full of polite giants,” Jizell said. She was by no means short by Angierian standards, but Wonda still towered over her. “Welcome.”
“Thank you, mistress,” Wonda said.
Jizell turned last to the Warded Man, still hidden in his hooded robe. “Well, I guess you need no introduction,” she said. “Let’s see, then.”
The Warded Man’s loose sleeves fell to his elbows as he reached up to draw back his hood. Jizell’s eyes widened slightly at the sight of his tattoos, but she took his hands and squeezed them warmly as she looked into his eyes.
“Thank you for saving Leesha’s life,” she said. Before he could react, she hugged him tightly. The Warded Man looked at Leesha in surprise, awkwardly returning the embrace.
“Now, if the rest of you can tend the horses, I’d like a few minutes to speak to Leesha alone,” she said. The others nodded, and Jizell escorted Leesha into the hospit.
Jizell’s hospit had been home to Leesha for several years, and still held a warm familiarity, but somehow it seemed smaller than it had just a year earlier.
“Your room is the same as you remember it,” Jizell said, as if reading her thoughts. “Kadie and some of the older girls grumble about it, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s your room until you say otherwise. You can bed there, and we can put the others in spare cots in the patient wards.” She broke into a smile. “Unless you’d like one of the men to share your room.” She gave Leesha a wink.
Leesha laughed. Jizell hadn’t changed at all, still trying to find Leesha a match. “That’s quite all right.”
“Seems a waste,” Jizell said. “You told me Gared was handsome, but you shorted him even so, and half the Jongleurs and Tenders in the city whisper that your Warded Man may be the Deliverer himself. Not to mention Rojer, a fine catch by any girl’s standards, and we all know he shines on you.”
“Rojer and I are just friends, Jizell,” Leesha said, “and the same goes for the others.”
Jizell shrugged and let the matter drop. “Just good to have you home.”
Leesha put a hand on her arm. “It’s only for a short time. Deliverer’s Hollow is my home now. The village has swollen into a small city, and they need all the Herb Gatherers they can get. I can’t stay away long; not ever again.”
Jizell sighed. “Bad enough I lost Vika to the Hollow, but now you, too. If the place is going to keep stealing my apprentices, I might as well sell the hospit and set up shop there.”
“We could use the extra Gatherers,” Leesha said, “but the town’s got threefold more refugees than we can feed. It’s no place for you and the girls right now.”
“Or the place we’re needed most,” Jizell said.
Leesha shook her head. “I expect you’ll have refugees aplenty in Angiers, before long.”