Two-Edged Blade

blanket of clay and stuffed with the mushrooms, together with the roots roasted in hot ashes, tasted like the finest feast she’d ever had.

“How in the Havens did you ever become a mercenary?” Eldan asked, wrapping a bandage around her leg, and securing it.

“Sort of fell into it, I suppose,” she replied. “I expect this is going to sound altogether horrible to you, but I happen to be good at fighting. And I didn’t want the kinds of things considered acceptable for young ladies.”

“Like husbands and children?” To her mild amazement, Eldan nodded. “My sister felt the same way. It’s just that I can’t imagine anyone with the Gift of Mindspeech being comfortable with killing people.”

“I don’t use it, much. The Gift, I mean. Wouldn’t miss it if it got taken from me.” She felt a little chill; Eldan was the only person besides Warrl to know about this so-called Gift, and the idea frightened her as nothing else in the past five years could. “Don’t—let anyone know, all right?”

“There’s no reason why I should,” he assured her, and somehow she believed him. “But I must admit, I don’t understand why you’d want to keep it secret if you don’t use it that much.”

“I live with mercenaries,” she pointed out to him. “People who value their privacy, and who generally have secrets.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “Where, among the Heralds, such Gifts are commonplace, and we understand that one doesn’t go rummaging about in someone else’s mind as if it were a kind of old-clothes bin. There’s a certain protocol we follow, and even the ordinary, unGifted people understand that in Valdemar.”

For a moment she tried to imagine a place where that would be true, a land where she wouldn’t be avoided for such an ability, or considered dangerous. She shook her head; places like that were only in tales.

“Well, we’re different,” he admitted. “Let me look at that slash along your ribs, hmm?”

She pulled off her tunic and pulled up her shirt without thinking twice about it; she’d have done the same with Tre or Gies, or Shallan. But when Eldan cleaned the long, shallow cut with his gentle hands, she found her cheeks warming, and she discovered to her chagrin that she found his touch very arousing.

That’s not surprising, she rationalized. We both came very close to death back there. The body does that, gets excited easily, after being in danger—I’ve seen Shallan vanish into the nearest bushes with Relli, both of them covered in gore. Coming close to death seems to make life that much more important. Hellfires, I’ve felt that way plenty of times, I just never did anything about it because there wasn’t anyone around that I wanted to wake up with.

He’s somebody I wouldn’t mind waking up with.

She caught the way her thoughts were tending, and sternly reprimanded herself. But that’s no reason to start with him.

:You know, my lady,: whispered a little caress of a thought across the surface of her mind, :just because you’ve always been afraid of something, that’s no reason to continue to fear it.:

For a moment she was confused, then angry with him for eavesdropping on her thoughts, until she realized he was talking about Mindspeech, not sex. But the touch of his mind on hers was as sensuous as the touch of his hands just under her breasts; the only other Mindspeaker she’d ever shared thoughts with was Warrl, and he was not only unhuman, “he” was a neuter. She had never felt anything quite so intimate as Eldan’s thought mingling with hers ... there were overtones that speech alone couldn’t convey. A sense that he found her as attractive as she found him; an intimation that his body was reacting to the near-brush with death in the same way....

We’re going to have to stay in here until the hunt dies down, she thought absently, more than half her attention being taken up with the feel of his warm hands soothing her aching ribs, and the silken touch of his thoughts against her mind. It’s going to happen sooner or later—we’re both young, and we’re both interested. There’s no earthly reason why we shouldn’t. If we don’t, things are only going to get very strained in here.

She caught his hands just as he finished bandaging her ribs, and slowly, and quite deliberately, drew him toward her.

He was surprised—oh, not entirely, just surprised that she was so forward, she suspected. There was just a sudden flash of something like shock, and only for a moment. She deliberately kept her mind open to his touch, and after a brief hesitation, his thoughts joined hers as their lips met, and he joined her on her bedroll.

She prepared to kiss him, parting her lips, only to find he’d done the same. She chuckled a little at his evident enthusiasm; he slid his hands under her shirt, over the breasts he had been trying very hard not to touch a moment before. She undid the fastenings of his breeches and helped him to get rid of them, while he rid her of shirt and underdrawers.

Tired and battered as they were, they moved slowly with each other, taking their cues from the things picked out of each other’s minds. Making love mind-to-mind like this was the most incredibly intimate and sensuous experience Kero had ever experienced; and it was evident that Eldan was no stranger to it. In fact, given the