Mercedes Lackey - Elvenblood

His hand held out to her was not the hand of the master, but the hand to help her over a difficult spot; one that expected her to do the same in return for him.

"A pin for your thoughts," Mero said softly.

She laughed. "Oh—that I am very glad that you are yourself."

"If I weren't myself, who would I be?" he replied comically.

"Not that idiot I was betrothed to, anyway." She had told him all about that horrid betrothal dinner; he had grimaced in sympathy, but then he had pointed out how the concubine must be feeling in all this. That she must surely be afraid of losing her position, and when that happened, it was a long, long fall—

At the end of that long fall, mere would probably be plenty of her fellow slaves who would be happy to see her brought down.

She had thought, then, of all her own father's former concubines, and had realized that much of their bitterness was due to that very thing. How could they not feel bitter? And what other recourse did they have to ease their broken pride but the kinds of subtle insubordination she had seen over and over?

Her mother must have known mat—and it was why her mother had ignored it, showing sensitivity that Rena had not at the time imagined.

"Well, I'm glad I'm myself, too. And I am glad that you are becoming more of yourself." He squeezed her hand gently, and she moved a little closer to him. Cattle lowed somewhere in the distance. "You are stronger every day, you know. You remember, more and more often, not to be afraid."

"Oh, I'm a coward for all of that," she told him, but he shook his head.

"No. You only forget, now and again, that you're really very brave. That's all." He took the hand he held, turned it palm upward, and planted a kiss in it, closing all her fingers around it. "Keep that to help you remember."

She shivered with pleasure and happiness, and felt herself blushing. "I will," she whispered.

"I know," he replied.

And he did. That was the glorious part. He did know.

She held to the moment as she held to the kiss. Whatever else came, she had this.

She would always have this.

Chapter 9

TODAY, WHILE JAMAL was watching his warriors in their practice games, the conspirators were meeting for the first time under blue skies rather than beneath the roof of a tent. Keman glanced around their little gathering uneasily; he didn't like the fact that they were meeting in the open, in a clear space between two of the tents belonging to the Priests, but he hadn't been able to voice his objections clearly.

He had been uneasy from the moment when Jamal capitulated to Shana's demand to speak only to Diric. There was something wrong; there had been for some time, but the "wrongness" lay only in the fact that things were going entirely too well. That made his unease all the more difficult to justify. Jamal was silent where they were concerned; he made no inquiries about them, accepted the maps and lists of properties and the means used to guard them with no comment, and didn't seem to care about anything else. There was something very wrong about that—given the fact that Jamal had been shamed before his own people by Shana's declarations, and Jamal was not a man to take such things lightly. He was a bad man to have as an enemy; he would never forget a slight, much less a wrong.

Shana told Keman that he was manufacturing trouble where there was none, and asked him with a touch of acidity if things were simply not perilous enough for him. But he could not get over the feeling that there was something they were all missing, and the clues were in Jamal's behavior, if they could only read them.

Today had begun warm, and was soon sweltering; muggy, without a hint of breeze. Heat shimmered the air above the grasses, and sweat did not dry, it only trickled down the body without cooling anything. The tents had collected so much heat that not even the Iron People could bear to remain within them; even Diric had agreed to Shana's suggestion that they conduct their business outside for a change. After all, Jamal and every warrior in the Clan were supposed to be engaging in contests today, to determine their fitness—though fitness for what, Jamal was not yet ready to reveal. Not to the majority of the Clan, anyway. It seemed safe enough for them all to meet in the open.

Yet Keman could not escape the feeling that they were all somehow following a plan of Jamal's devising.

"If we could arrange for the roof of the tent to part, as if we had all grown claws to rend it, then wings to fly away," Shana suggested, as Keman returned his attention to the group. "Or would it be better to look as if we had escaped into the earth instead?"

"That would be my preference," Kalamadea began. "Perhaps by—"

"Oh, what a touching little gathering," a slow, drawling voice interrupted loudly.

Kalamadea, Shana, and Keman all jerked upright as if their heads had been on strings pulled by a puppet-dancer, for the language of the speaker was not the Iron People's tongue.

It was that of the dragons, and the voice was someone Keman recognized only too well—

Myre?

A tall woman of the Iron People, lean and muscular and dressed as a warrior, leaned indolently against the side of a wagon. It was no form that Keman recognized, and yet the woman had all of the arrogant stance that he associated with his sister. And she had a dragon-shadow.

"You see, Lord Jamal," the woman continued in the tongue of their captors, a sly smile on her face, "it is as I told you. The Priest confers with the demons to aid in their escape, and as I claimed, the two Com People are not Corn People at all, but yet more demons."

Even Lorryn's illusions were something the Iron People were able to see through, if they simply stopped believing in them. Jamal's eyes narrowed as he stared at Lorryn and his sister, and he nodded, slowly.

Keman's heart stopped.

"So I see." Jamal stepped forward a pace, and stood with his arms crossed over his chest, an angry smile on his face. "I see six enemies, and one traitor. Or—perhaps not. I shall give you a chance to save yourself, Diric. Perhaps you have grown senile with age, Diric, and these demons have deluded you. Perhaps it is time for the powers of the Priest to pass into the hands of the War Chief. Should you decide to come to your senses and grant me those powers, I might forget this meeting."

This all had the sound of something carefully rehearsed, as if Jamal was reciting words he knew by heart. But—why?

Diric stood up, slowly, his face as still as the iron of his forges. "You will have those powers only if you dare to challenge me for them, young fool," he replied, his own voice as cold as the snows in the mountains. "And remember, I can name a champion."

Diric had been "courting" the Man-Hearted Women, who were angry with Jamal's treatment of them—and who composed some of the best fighters in the Clan. He could name one of them as a champion, and not only would the fight likely go to her, since Jamal was somewhat out of practice, but Jamal's defeat would mean disgrace in his own eyes.

"As can I," came the lazy reply. "And I choose—her."

And, unexpectedly, he pointed to Myre.

"I think you have no champion her like," the War Chief continued gleefully, openly reveling in the shock of Diric's face. "If I were you, I should surrender your authority now. It will go easier on all of you."

And Myre smiled, the smile of someone who knows that the dice are loaded, that the game is already decided.

Of all of them. Keman was the swiftest to realize what the sly smile on Myre's face meant, and the smug one on Jamal's. She's told him! Or she showed him! He knows that she's a dragon!

And before Diric could make the fatal error that Jamal was probably expecting, of naming one of the other Man-Hearted Women as his own champion, Keman acted.