The Shattered Vine by Laura Anne Gilman Read Free Book Online Page B

hands, palm up and layered left on right at even height with the hound’s black nose, staying in clear sight. The hound looked her directly in the eye and took both hands in its mouth, the same as it had Kaïnam, but this time it did not let go but rather bore down, enough that Jerzy saw Mahault flinch slightly.
    “Mahl . . .” A world of question in that one breath of air; Mahl managed to shake her head just enough to warn Kaïnam from doing anything and not yet dislodge the hound or lose eye contact with it. The stranger solitaire merely stood back and watched, so Jerzy took his own cue from that.
    It happened so fast, nobody, not even the solitaire, could react in time.From a nearly frozen tableau, the hound released Mahault’s hands and lurched forward, knocking her backward onto the flagstone floor, her head making a hard thunk as it hit. Her hands, released, came up, but even as Kaïnam was reaching for his blade to kill the beast, Jerzy had his hand on the hilt, stopping him. The Vineart didn’t remember moving, had not taken his eyes off Mahault long enough to see the princeling move, and yet his gesture had been unerring.
    Mahault was laughing. The hound, rather than tearing her throat out, was laving her face with a great pink tongue.
    “Codi, leave the sister alone,” the solitaire said. Her posture was still alert, loose-limbed and ready to take action, but her voice was softer, less a command than a request.
    The hound gave her face one last washing and backed off, taking a seated position just behind the solitaire’s left knee. Mahault got to her feet in a graceful scramble and stood facing the other woman.
    “I am not a solitaire,” she said.
    The fighter cocked her head, simply looking at Mahl. “Codi is rarely wrong,” she said, and then seemed to dismiss the matter from her thoughts, turning to Justus. “Two more have fallen ill. I can do no more for them than make them comfortable.”
    Jerzy jumped in before their escort could respond. “What is the nature of the illness? Fever? Rash? Justus said that there was no warning, that people simply fell over, and had no strength?”
    “In truth, yes. I would accuse them of malingering, save I have come to know these people, and they are not that sort. Such extreme exhaustion afflicts them that the act of merely moving their limbs brings agony.” The solitaire seemed both worried and exasperated. “Other than bathing and feeding them, we have been able to bring no relief. That was when Justus sent for the healer.”
    “A spell, Jer?” Kaï asked quietly.
    Jerzy didn’t bother to respond, moving forward to where the cots had been gathered. The solitaire and her hound moved aside for him, her gaze flickering down to his waist, where the silver tasting spoongleamed faintly in the spell-lights set in the walls. The lights had been set to half-burn, likely to spare the eyes of the ill, but Jerzy needed to see what he was looking at. As he passed, he raised one hand, the way he would going down the stairs to his master’s study, and the illumination increased to near-normal levels.
    A muted gasp from someone was overridden by Justus’s quiet rumble as he explained who the newcomer was. He should not have used quiet-magic so casually, so openly; he was careless. The thought came and went, everything else fading from Jerzy’s awareness, even as he sensed Kaï at his left shoulder, Mahault at his right, two paces back and waiting for any orders he might give them.
    The cot nearest him held a man who should have been working out in the fields: ruddy faced, with close-cropped hair that was starting to thin; he had broad shoulders and thick muscles that, even now, looked as though he had only to sit up to do a full day’s work. But the lines deeply indented in his face told a different story, one of exhaustion and pain.
    Exhaustion, more than pain.
    The next cot had a slightly younger, more slender man. He had a scar across his chest that looked as