Mercedes Lackey - Elvenblood

I can't afford the distraction either. I'm walking a knife-edge here. And— I don't want to know how she feels. Not now. Maybe not for a long time. I—I just don't want to know if she does think of me as no more than another wizard. I'd rather cherish a few illusions for a while.

Besides, it wasn't as if he didn't have other things to think about!

Rena coughed politely, and he turned back to face them. They stood discreetly enough, side by side, but their hands kept creeping toward one another. He kept his eyes above the level of their hands.

"How did it go?" he asked.

Her face shone with pleasure at her own accomplishments. "Perfectly," she replied. "I showed my jewelry—they'd already been seeing it, of course, at fetes, and I told them where they could find it. I told Lunalia and Merynis the truth about it—their fathers are horrid people—and I slipped them pouches then and there. It's really dreadful; this was supposed to be a prebetrothal party for poor Lunalia. Her father's pledged her to some arrogant er-Lord who seems to think she should act like his concubine, and not even having vapors at the mention of anything indelicate or pretending to faint when he took off his shirt made him—" She stopped as Lorryn choked on laughter, and doubled up, gasping. "What are you laughing at?"

He told her about his last "customer," and had to hold on to a table when she started to giggle too.

She was not the gentle little ineffectual Sheyrena she had been—the Sheyrena who would have reacted to his laughter with indignation, and who probably would have burst into tears at the notion that he could have found Lunalia's plight funny. She'd found that spine he had wished she would grow, and he had a notion that she'd found it somewhere back in the alicorn-hills.

She wasn't "his" little Rena anymore, though. In a way, that made him a bit sad. She didn't look to him for a partner in jokes or a source of company—she looked to Mero.

Oh, it was natural and inevitable, but it also meant that little Rena had grown up…

As if to underscore that point, she sobered. "The only thing is—Lunalia was the last," she said. "We agreed that I couldn't risk the private estates, because it would be too easy for me to be trapped there. That means there is only one more place on our list for me to go."

Mero froze, and Lorryn nodded. Their own work here was well started, the last of the five cities to plant their gardens of discontent in. All of the rest had a flourishing network of tiny shops, human slave-craftsmen silver-plating the Iron People's work and manufacturing the simpler versions, all overseen by a shape-changed dragon sent to them by Keman.

I wonder—could that have been the mysterious quest that Keman has gone off on? Mero didn't seem to know any of them, but they were dragons, no doubt about it. After Shana showed us how to spot a dragon-shadow, there is no way that we could be fooled on that score. Could Keman be recruiting more dragons somewhere?

Well, it didn't much matter, not unless Keman managed to recruit most of the dragons from most of the Lairs, before the revolt took place, and that wasn't too likely.

The point was, it was time for Rena to go home.

"You don't have to go," he reminded her, although anxiety cramped his insides every time he even thought about his mother. She was alive, at least; that much he knew, for he had it confirmed from several sources. Her pretense that her real son had been born dead, and a "changeling" substituted by the midwife, had been accepted. Her feigned madness had been accepted as well, and had freed her from further questioning. It was a terrible scandal, but no worse than that.

And she had been confined to a single building in the garden, rather than facing the full wrath of her lord and husband—and the wrath of the law, which would permit—no, order—him to execute her for knowingly giving birth to a halfblood.

As yet, there were no rumors to the effect that Rena had escaped with him. In fact, the only rumors he had heard were that her mother's collapse into madness and Lorryn's own betrayal had sent her into a decline. She was said to have taken to her bed and refused to wed Lord Gildor until the honor of her family was redeemed. That was as pretty piece of fiction, probably spread about by Lord Tylar himself.

"I have to go," she told him earnestly. "We both know that. I won't pretend that I'm not afraid, but at least he can't read my thoughts—and I will have my own jewelry to protect me if he strikes at me in a rage."

"But not if he lulls you into thinking that everything is all right, then orders his men to haul you off to some more powerful lord for—" He couldn't say it.

She tightened her lips, and tightened her grip on Mero's hand, but only said, "That's the risk I have to take. But I'm a much better actress than I was before. I think that I can make this work."

He sighed, and stepped forward to hug her, freeing one hand to pat Mero's shoulder as the young halfblood showed him the face of pure agony that he would not turn to his beloved. "If you say you can, I will believe it, sweeting. You are not the silly little girl who used to read romances in the garden, let her birds perch on her shoulders, and then have to hide the soiled gowns from her father in terror."

"Oh, I'm not so far removed from that as you might think," she whispered bravely into his ear. "Just now I have to hide a soiled past, rather than a soiled gown. Rather easier, actually."

He had to shake his head over that, as he let her go. "All right," he replied. "We'll proceed as we planned in the morning. Right now—I've got to go meet with a few people, then I'm going to go to bed. The transportation spell is going to take a lot out of me."

He turned and went back out into the hallway without a single backward glance, leaving the two of them alone to make their good-byes however they chose.

And he actually managed to repress his envy enough to wish them both, sincerely, well.

He hadn't told Mero about this meeting; he'd intended to, because he would much rather have had someone to watch his back, but he couldn't bear to steal a single moment of Mero's time from Rena.

This time he was going out into the streets, with the reverse of his guise of a young elven lord. He was out there, after dark, as a human slave.

He kept his eyes on the ground ahead of him and his back hunched, but his neck prickled every time someone looked at him, or seemed to look at him, for more than a heartbeat. He didn't think anyone would be looking for halfbloods among the human slaves, but how could he be sure? He wished that slaves were allowed something like a hood to cover his ears, but he would have to trust to darkness for that.

His nerves didn't stop jumping until he finally reached his goal: a plain storefront with a sign of a green leaf above the door. The place looked closed up for the night, but when he tapped in a prearranged signal, the door opened for him.

He slipped inside and his contact closed the door behind him, quickly, leaving him standing in the darkness, shivering. "Come into the dispensary," came a low whisper. "I can strike a light there that won't be seen from the street."

He followed the sound of footsteps ahead of him, barking his shin on a bench and holding in a curse. A hand touched his arm, guiding him forward, and then he heard the sound of a second door closing.

A moment later, a lantern flared into life, revealing the man he had been asked to meet, as well as the contents of the room in which they found themselves.

His nose would have told him the contents of the room: herbs, more herbs than he could identify by odor, a mingled aroma of bitter and sweet, fragrant and pungent, and just plain odd. The room was lined with shelves covered with bottles, jars, and little boxes, carefully labeled. There was a waist-high table in the middle, covered with an immaculately white cloth.