Mercedes Lackey - Owlsight

“It’s a point,” she agreed, relieved that he had conceded the potential conflict. She already had the germ of an idea in her head, but for it to succeed, she would need him. She stood up. “First things first, though. Let’s go see if Captain Kero left anything of Shandi. I want to know more about this premonition of hers than she told me on the ride.”

They spotted Shandi, sans Companion, walking toward them through the camp as they returned to the cave Keisha was glad that the Herald-Captain hadn’t significantly damaged her sister; in fact, Shandi was remarkably composed for someone who had just faced the redoubtable Kerowyn on the wrong side of a situation.

Nevertheless, she was clearly glad to see Keisha and Danan, and equally glad to be taken off to Darian’s campsite. “Whew!” she said, collapsing on Darian’s bedroll and stretching out flat, both eyes closed. “I’ve faced off against Cap’n Kerowyn with a weapon, and I never wanted to do that again, but getting a dressing-down from her is a hundred times worse!” She opened one eye and looked up at both of them. “Whose bed am I taking up anyway? Yours? You’re Darian, the half-Hawkbrother, I presume?”

“Right on both counts,” Darian said, his mind still clearly elsewhere, but his tone quite cool and unimpressed with Shandi’s casual attitude. “And I presume that the Herald-Captain has informed you just how dangerous this situation is that you’ve casually barged into without so much as a ‘by your leave’?”

Keisha was astonished; she had never heard a young man take that tone with her sister! They usually couldn’t keep themselves from near-servility, but Darian had just done a little dressing-down himself, had come within a hair of sounding angry with her, quite as if she were his little sister and not Keisha’s! There was no doubt that the comment was intended as a rebuke, and Keisha hadn’t ever heard a young man rebuke her sister since Shandi had turned ten!

Shandi sat straight up, also taken aback by Darian’s tone. “She did,” she replied, nettled. “She also gave me leave to remain, on the basis of my premonition and the Collegium’s acceptance of it, as long as I understood I was under her orders, absolutely and without exception or excuses.”

Darian leveled a look at the Trainee that was just as severe as Kerowyn would have wanted. “She means it, and we’ll back it,” he told her flatly. “If you’re ordered out of here, you will go, even if I have to knock you out and tie you onto that Companion of yours. And don’t think you can hide somewhere if you’re ordered out either; you can’t hide from the eyes of our birds or the noses of our kyree, no matter where you go or how cleverly you think you can conceal yourself.”

“I’ve no intention of disobeying orders!” Shandi snapped back, eyes flashing and her temper beginning to show. Keisha stepped in before it turned into a quarrel.

“I’ve got to know more about this premonition,” she said earnestly. “You didn’t give me anything to make any kind of judgment on.”

“I don’t have that much myself,” Shandi replied in irritation, still annoyed with Darian and giving him a dagger-laden glare. “All I got was a few flashes and a feeling - a flash of me, one of you, one of him, though I didn’t know who he was at the time, and a very, very strong feeling that I had to be where the Captain was, so strong that I was halfway to Companion’s Field to get Karles before I came to my senses. That’s it.”

“That’s all?” Darian asked incredulously. “And on that basis the Collegium gave you leave to come to a battle zone? Are they crazed?”

“So far I’ve had a grand total of four days of training in my Gift,” Shandi said tartly. “It’s not exactly under my control, all right? I have to make do with what I get. It was good enough for the Senior Herald at the Collegium.”

“Now why am I so certain that the Senior Herald at the Collegium didn’t even know that we’d contacted the barbarians yet?” Darian shook his head in disbelief, but didn’t challenge her any further, which made Keisha grateful. Shandi didn’t lose her temper often - at least, the Shandi she knew didn’t - but when she did, the results were often spectacular. At the moment, that was one spectacle she’d prefer not to witness.

Darian took a deep breath, closed his eyes a moment (probably counting to ten, or invoking patience), and then opened them again. “You’re probably tired,” he said. “You must have ridden like a madwoman to get here as quickly as you did. Why don’t you get some sleep while I make sure someone gets a billet set up somewhere else for me? A bed’s a bed, and I don’t care where I sleep.”

Shandi heaved a great sigh and lay down again. “Thanks. Sorry to be so sharp - I am pretty tired - ”

She closed her eyes, and didn’t so much fall asleep as pass out; she did it so quickly that Keisha realized she must have gone without sleeping - except in the saddle - for her entire journey. Darian obviously realized it, too; he managed a little smile, and took Keisha by the elbow, leading her silently away through the rows of tents.

“You’re the only one of us that looks like she got any sleep last night,” he observed, when they were out of earshot.

“I probably am,” she replied, noting with concern the deep shadows under his eyes. “That was awfully good of you, to give up your bedroll to her.”

He waved the compliment aside. “It’s just a bedroll, the hertasi can move my things elsewhere, and they will as soon as I - Heyla!” He interrupted himself, as a hertasi poked its snout out of a larger tent. It waited expectantly while he hissed something at it, bobbed its head, and ran off.

“There,” he said with satisfaction. “I’ve got myself a new bunk with Wintersky, and you one with the Healers - which I’d better take you to, so you can all get your heads together over this Summer Fever thing.”

“Thank you,” she replied, feeling more confident than she had since Shandi carried her off this morning. “Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems more important to me than the barbarians fighting with us.”

“And maybe you’re right,” was Darian’s thoughtful reply. “After all, there’s always the tactic of bottling them up in their camp and starving them into submission, but a line of fighters isn’t going to keep a plague inside their pickets. Listen, I hope you weren’t of fended by the way I treated your sister, but - well - ” He scratched his head, then shrugged. “I’m not impressed. She strikes me as used to getting her own way a lot, pretty immature, actually. Honestly, she hasn’t half the brains and good sense you have.”

“She’s probably so tired that half her brains aren’t working,” Keisha pointed out. “Besides, she’s not used to boys who treat her like - like - ”

“Like a brat who’s getting away with something she shouldn’t?” Darian offered, with a half smile. “Like a spoiled village princess who expects fellows to melt just because she looks at them with those sweet, brown doe-eyes? Oh, please!”

Keisha was so surprised by his answer that she simply stared at him for a moment. “Well - she is so very pretty - ”

“Not prettier than you,” Darian said bluntly. “And you have a great deal more than being pretty, if you’ll pardon my saying so. A Hawkbrother could turn a mud-doll into a beauty; we aren’t that impressed by prettiness alone.”

For all his bluntness, he started to blush as he said that, and looked quickly away as she continued to stare at him in further astonishment.