Owlsight

“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.

“Right, here’s the Healers’ tent,” he said quickly, waving at the large tent pitched at the end of the path they were on. “You go right on up. The hertasi will have told them you’re coming. I’ll find Wintersky’s billet and get a nap myself, before something else happens.”

Still blushing, he left her and made a sharp turn to the right, as she watched him hurry away with bemusement.

Then she shook herself into sense, and made straight for the Healers’ tent and business. Granted, it was entirely a new and rather delightful feeling to have a young man tell her she was pretty, and blush over her, but this was neither the time nor the place to get moonstruck.

When she got within earshot of the tent, she heard the debate already going on inside; she pushed open the flap, and was greeted immediately.