asked acidly, then sighed. 'Never mind. Who knows? A miracle might happen. And in any event, if the two of us are gone when the Militia arrives and the Scouring Hunt is set loose, maybe the City won't be in such a hurry to enforce its decrees.'
TO Idalia's surprise—though not to Kellen's, who had been in on some of the early plans—visitors began arriving at dawn of the day before the two of them were to leave: not only villagers from Merryvale, but others from villages and steadings even farther away. All arrived bearing the makings of a celebration: kegs of beer and wine and mead and cider, wheels of cheese, smoked hams, loaves of honey-glazed bread.
It was quite literally dawn. This, Kellen had not expected, though he had been awake and working on the preparations for their own departure the moment there was any light in the sky. Idalia had elected to stay abed a little longer than that, but the first of the visitors arrived with a great deal of noise, despite Kellen's attempts to hush them. And there was no keeping the surprise secret at that point.
'I—I—what?' Idalia stammered, staggering out the door of the cabin, still in her sleeping-shift, with her hair tumbled over one sleep-fogged eye, to stare befuddled at the first of the arriving visitors.
'Well, don't stand there gawping, you witless woman! It's a good-bye party—and we've brought good eating, too,' Cormo growled, glaring at her with mock ferocity.
The Centaur was nearly unrecognizable, though for an entirely different reason than on his last visit to the clearing. His hair and beard and tail were neatly combed and trimmed. He wore a new smooth-leather vest, bright with embroidery. His coat had been brushed until it gleamed, and his hooves were oiled, trimmed, and polished. And most amazing of all, he was pulling a two-wheeled cart—he could easily have reduced it to kindling with a few well-placed kicks, had he wished—piled high with provisions for the feast. Haneida sat placidly on the seat, a bright shawl wrapped around her.
'You heard what he said. It's a going-away party,' Kellen said, coming up behind Idalia and grinning like a fiend.
He was very well pleased with himself over this; planning the party had given his new friends something to look forward to in all of the sadness of the many departures, a bright spot in a very gloomy situation. He was equally pleased with being able to outwit his sister well enough to keep it all secret.
She turned on him, advancing on him and making him back away into the cabin. 'You… brat! You knew this was going to happen!' Idalia sputtered. She was crimson—he thought not with rage, but certainly she was as embarrassed as he'd ever seen her. And suddenly there was a wicked look in her eye…
'I knew they wanted to have a party to see you off,' Kellen said, turning to flee.
But there was nowhere to flee to.
'You told them when we were leaving!' she growled, and grabbed for his collar.
He tried to dodge out of reach, but it was a small cabin. 'I might have—help!—told someone—yow!—that we were leaving tomorrow! But I didn't think they'd start so early! Honest, Idalia! Help!'
But it was no good. She'd backed him into the bedroom, tripped him onto the bed, and pummeled him into submission with the pillow.
'Monster! Beast!' she shouted, punctuating each epithet with a whack from a pillow. 'Fiend! Serpent! Brother! Letting me walk out into the middle of that in my shift with my hair in rats! Hanging's too good for you. Much too good for you,' she added meaningfully, tossing the pillow aside and crooking her fingers into claws.
And then she tickled him until he was helpless and breathless with laughter.
'It is, it really is,' Kellen agreed fervently. 'Only just don't tickle me anymore!'
'Well, get up,' Idalia said unfairly, giving him one last swat with the pillow and bouncing off the bed. She scooped up his buckskins (since he'd been stripped to his smallclothes in order to get water wrestled up from the stream for baths) and flung them at him. 'Out!'
Kellen dressed in the kitchen, watching the hubbub through the half-opened door. In the few short minutes he'd been gone, the clearing already looked like it belonged to someone else—people were taking down the cookpit and raking the area smooth, taking the logs that were to have gone to become the floor of the addition to Idalia's cabin and making trestle tables of them instead. He could hear the sound of hammers and saws, and smell the scent of fresh sawdust on the air.
Everything in the cabin but what they were taking with them, from the bed to the walls to the planks of the floor, would be going as well once they left, and already the cabin was far barer than it had been when Kellen came. But Idalia had traded to good purpose in the last fortnight, trading large bulky items for small and valuable ones, until after a number of clever trades and a little payment in magic, she had been able to buy the neat black mare Coalwind, the pride of Badelz's stables, who was tethered contentedly beside Prettyfoot in a nearby clearing. The fauns adored her and spoiled her outrageously, bringing her bunches of clover and dryad-apples. The mare, for all her breeding and promised turn of speed, seemed to have good manners and a quiet disposition—a good thing, considering the amount of noise Idalia's farewell party was going to make, if these early preparations were any indication.
Kellen was just lacing up his boots when Idalia came out of the bedroom. She glanced out the door, and
