The Black Gryphon

kestra’chern, that is.”

The skin of her neck flushed again. “I—you are a better Healer than I am,” she replied, with painful humility. She hadn’t liked admitting that. “If you would be so kind—I know what your fees are for other things—but if you can spare the time—”

“To make certain the Healer of my friends is in the best of health, I would forgo the fee a king would offer for my services,” Amberdrake replied with dignity. “When you are in pain, you can’t do your best work; you know that as well as I do. Skan is not the only gryphon friend I have, and I want my friends to have nothing less than the finest and most competent of care.”

“Ah,” she said weakly. “Ah, thank you.”

He examined the injury again. “I’ve done all I can about this spinal pad right now,” he told her truthfully. “I need to finish that massage, and then you can go. I think you’ll feel some difference.”

“I already do,” she admitted.

He rubbed some fresh scented oil into the palms of his hands to warm it, and started soothing the muscles of her back he had not reached earlier. They had gone into spasms so often they had become as tense and tight as harp-wires, and as knotted as a child’s first spun thread.

She gasped as the first of them released; quivered all over in fact. Amberdrake was quite familiar with that reaction, but evidently she wasn’t.

“Oh!” she exclaimed and tensed again. “I—”

“It’s quite all right, don’t move,” he ordered. “It’s the natural reaction to releasing tensed muscles. Ignore it if you can, and try to enjoy it if you can’t ignore it.”

She didn’t reply to that; interesting. The last commoner he’d made that particular remark to had said, with dangerous irony, “What, like rape?” It was a natural thought for the ordinary soldier, who all too often found him or herself in the position of victim.

But there was no tightening of Winterhart’s neck muscles, no tensing at all to indicate that thought had occurred to her.

Interesting. Very interesting. So whatever she is afraid of, it isn’t that. And she is not the “ordinary soul” she says that she is.

“If I hurt you, tell me,” he said. “A good massage should not hurt—and in your case, if I start to hurt you, you’ll tense up again, and undo everything I’ve done so far other than the real Healing.”

“I will,” she promised. “But it doesn’t hurt. It just feels very odd. My m—the massages I’ve had in the past were never for injuries.”

What other kinds of massages are there? She can’t mean sexual. So— for beauty treatments?

That would account for the superb state of her body. There were no blemishes, no signs of scarring anywhere. When the posturing and stiffness were gone from Winterhart’s body, she was a magnificent sculpture of human beauty. She cared for her skin and hair scrupulously, filed her toenails, and had no calluses anywhere that he had seen, not even the calluses associated with riding or fighting.

Unusual, and definitely the marks of someone highborn, and he thought he knew all the humans of noble lineage who had ever lived near Urtho’s Tower.

Perhaps she was from before I came here? But that would date back to the very beginning of the war.

“Do you get along with your commanders?” he asked, adding, “I need to know because if you don’t, it is going to affect how your muscles will react and I may need to ask you to resort to herbal muscle relaxants when you are around them.”

She was silent for a very long time. “They think I am the proper subordinate. I suppose I used to be; that may be why my back went badly wrong all at once. I don’t ever contradict them, even now. I suppose you’ll think I’m a coward, but even though I don’t agree with the way they treat the gryphons, I don’t want to be stripped of my rank and sent away.”

“You wouldn’t be, if you took your case to Urtho,” he pointed out. “As Trondi’irn, it is your job to countermand even the generals if you believe your charges are being mistreated.”

“I can’t do that.” Her skin was cold; she was afraid. Of what? Of confrontation? Of going directly to Urtho?

“Besides,” she continued hurriedly. “My I . . . lover is one of Shaiknam’s mages; his name is Conn Levas. If I