Changespell Legacy by Doranna Durgin Read Free Book Online Page A

willingness to drive himself to the limit to accomplish those same things. His own body was living proof.
    He'd drive her to the limit too, she suddenly realized. And that meant this might be her chance to prove to him— "Arlen," Carey said distinctly, watching her as though she didn't get it, "was with the Council."
    "What are you going to do?" Suliya asked. "What do you want me to do?"
    Jaime turned on her. "Don't you even want to know what happened?"
    Carey closed his eyes a brief moment, softening his reaction with visible effort. "It's not like we have the answers, Jay. But we'll get them. And you ," he said to Suliya, "are going along for the ride."
    "I don't understand." With all the high emotion in the room, Suliya thought a quietly wary answer was best. She still didn't quite grasp what had happened and raced ahead without her, although she was apparently about to be part of it. Not necessarily a bad thing.
    "I am going to the new hold in Siccawei," Jess said, speaking up for the first time, her words thicker than usual. "Dayna has asked for us—"
    "I can't leave," Carey said. "Not now. And Jaime needs to be here; if Arlen—well, if he tries to make contact"— if he's somehow not dead , unspoken words that came through loudly enough for Suliya to hear even without practice in reading him—"it'll be here."
    "So it's me," Jess said. "But not alone. Though I could ." She directed the last straight at Carey, no little annoyance or defiance in her voice.
    "Of course you could," Carey said impatiently. "That's not the point. The point is, I don't want you to do it that way. I wouldn't want anyone to go alone on that route right now."
    Jess didn't look entirely convinced.
    Neither was Suliya. "I'm not going on a run?" she said. "I'm just—" and she stopped herself from saying tagging along with Jess , hearing just in time how petulant it would sound. She didn't mean it that way . . . she'd only wanted the chance— Carey jerked his head at the doorway, his meaning clear enough; Suliya, with a glance at Jess, left the room. Carey followed her—Carey alone.
    He took her to the end of the hall, with the stairs at her heels and the light from the stairwell window splashing against his face and sparking the bright green flecks in his hazel eyes. Not quite angry . . . but looking at her as intently as anyone ever had. She opened her mouth without words in mind, anything to forestall the lecture she saw coming.
    He got there first. "Just listen," he said, catching her gaze and holding it, holding it even when she would have looked away. "Listen well. You may be looking for something more important, but there is nothing more important to me than making sure Jess makes it safely to Second Siccawei."
    Trouble-ride, that look of his. She tried to turn her words around, unspoken as they'd been. "I just didn't understand why you picked someone she doesn't really know."
    "Because we have a burning lot of messages going out, and they all have to get there right now . You know some of the routes, but you don't know any of the shortcuts. And today," he raised a meaningful eyebrow at her, "is a shortcut day."
    She'd know the shortcuts if she'd had the chance to make more runs before this . . . but she didn't say it.
    Honestly puzzled, she did say, "Why so many messages? Why can't Mage Dispatch handle some of it? If things are really bad, people could use the transport booths to carry messages. Those shortcuts . . . they're rough. The horses will pay for using them."
    He gave her a grim little smile, one that should have warned her. "Takes a while to map it all, doesn't it?
    The Secondary Council is in a panic; the first thing they did was shut down the transfer booths—they're trying to contain whoever did this. Frankly, I'm not sure they could keep the whole system running during a crisis of this magnitude. They're only prepared to replace Council members one at a time."
    She blinked at him, brushing one fat mahogany corkscrew curl