Elvenblood

besides being pretty.'

'If that be so—then ye' got th' bargain!' Collen exclaimed, his hands closing possessively on the piece of skin when Keman showed no interest in reclaiming it. 'We kin get 'bout all ye mot need wi' this as the trade goods.'

'What about our settling here?' Denelor asked. 'Is that going to be a problem? We didn't see any signs of habitation in this valley, and we plan to be as discreet as you would, in our place. I think we can make sure the elves don't find us.'

Collen shrugged, as if it was a matter of complete indifference to him. Maybe it was. 'I think ye got yersel's a fair home. Sure, an' we won' be disputin' it wi' ye, an' there's none I know of that hev a claim here. 'Tis all yours fer the claimin', lak. Be nice t' know that his part 'o th' river's safe from cat-eyed spies, eh?'

'So we could say that—this is a kind of welcoming, then?' Parth Agon said, mildly.

'Oh, aye!' the human trader laughed, as if Parth had told him a joke. 'Oh, aye, an' well-come indeed!'

Chapter 4

SHEYRENA COULD HARDLY believe her luck when, the day after the fete, absolutely nothing happened. She had spent the day in a state of dulled dread, expecting—at the least—to be called into her father's presence and interrogated about just whom she had spoken and danced with, and what they had said. Worse were the fears that Lord Tylar would somehow discover her lack of 'conquests,' and call her to account for that.

Instead, there was no summons, not even a note. She was, as usual, ignored. With the sole exception of the fact that she was permitted to sleep late, her day passed precisely as any other day. She walked in the garden and tended her birds, had her lessons in music and etiquette, and made her daily call upon her mother in her mother's bower. Only there did she have any reminders that this was not quite an ordinary day. She and Lady Viridina discussed nothing but the gowns the other elven ladies had been wearing—speculating on how they had been made and of what materials, deciding whether or not the particular style would be suited to Rena or the Lady herself. In other bowers, with a collection of elven ladies, there would have been other comments, too, of course—comments on how poorly suited the gowns of certain ladies (absent from the current group, of course) had been, either in terms of style or in terms of the wearer's endowments. Lady Viridina did not encourage gossip, however, so none of that entered the discussion in her bower.

Nor were there any discussions of which young lords seemed to have paired off with young ladies. That, in Lady Viridina's opinion, was also gossip, and of no one's concern except the parties involved.

The truth of the matter in the bower today was that Lady Viridina discussed the gowns, and her slaves-of- the-wardrobe murmured appropriate comments. Rena simply listened, and not very attentively. Oh, normally she enjoyed the topic as much as anything except riding with Lorryn, but today she had rather not be reminded how wonderful the other ladies looked—not when she had suffered in all ways by comparison. She had thought until last night that she had no pride left to bruise, but that was simply not true. It had hurt to look into the mirror and see a laughingstock. It still hurt this morning.

I wish there were a way to destroy that horrid gown, she thought resentfully. I don't ever want to see it again!

Viridina didn't seem to notice her silence, though, which was just as well. As she rattled off details of trains and trimming, it occurred to Rena that her mother was oddly distracted, as if Lady Viridina also had something weighing heavily on her mind, and was trying to disguise the fact with idle chat.

She's probably worried about Lorryn, I suppose. I rather doubt it has anything to do with me.

After what seemed like half the day, Viridina finally dismissed her daughter, and Rena was free to return to her garden and her books. There, with two of her birds sitting on her shoulders, she carefully worked out the spell that had been used on the birds at the fete, the one that made them fly off to make their droppings, then return. That was the most useful spell she had ever seen, and it was definitely going to come in handy here!

She set it on only one of the birds, at first—she didn't want to hurt them by getting the spell wrong, after all—but when it worked perfectly, she quickly made it part of every flying thing in her garden. Now she could pet and play with them to her heart's content, and never have to worry about the results!

One of the prettiest, an especially gentle little thing with bright red feathers and a hooked bill, loved to sit on her shoulder and press his face and body against her neck for hours at a time. She'd been reluctant to let him do that for very long, and especially reluctant to allow him to sit there when she was reading, since she tended to forget where she was—with the result that Visyr would usually do something unfortunate before she noticed, and she would have to run and change her gown before either her mother or her father saw it. There were days when she'd had to change her gown no less than three times! So that afternoon was an occasion of perfect enjoyment for both of them—for Rena could sit in the garden with her book, and Visyr could sit on her shoulder and be petted for as long as he liked. She discovered that his capacity for being petted was a great deal greater than she had ever suspected. He was the perfect tranquilizer, and she ended the day in a calm and cheerful mood.

She woke with the same apprehension as before, though, for her dreams had been filled with images of Lord Tylar and the punishments he was creating for her, for not having caught a husband.

But once again, her fears were all for no cause—nothing happened that was out of the ordinary during the entire day.

The next day, and the day following, were repetitions of the same. Most important, there were no expressions of disapproval from Lord Tylar. Rena began to relax, slowly, as she attempted to puzzle out just what was occupying her father. At a guess, the political connections that her father had made at the fete were proving to be so engrossing that he had forgotten his original, intention—that of ensuring she found an advantageous alliance. That would, indeed, be typical for his thinking. Anything having to do with her and her future (or lack of it) would always take a poor second place to Lord Tylar's personal aspirations, and that was precisely how she wanted things at the moment. The more he thought of himself, the less he would think of her.

The only cloud on her cautious happiness was that Lorryn was still recovering from his illness, and had not come to visit her. Normally he would find an excuse to stop by her garden at least once during the day, and more often if he planned to include her in a surreptitious excursion. Indeed, the word from the slaves was that he had not even left his suite since before the fete. There was no hint that his case was more serious than she had been told, only that he had exhausted himself more completely than anyone had initially thought

She would really have been worried sick about him if there had been any indication that something was wrong with him. As it was, she missed him; not only because she truly loved and admired him, but for his conversation. The slaves were hardly up to much clever repartee, and he was the only person besides Myre who didn't treat her as if she had the same mental capacity as a child. Even her mother spoke to her as if she were always as dazed and absentminded as she had been over the past few days.

Still, he shouldn't have been sick for this long; attacks had never laid him low for more than a day before. She fretted over him as she walked in her garden, and stared in the direction of his suite. What had he done to himself? Was this why her mother was upset, and covering her concern with false cheer?

She went to bed on the evening of the third day following the fete in a state of anxiety herself, when repeated messages to him brought only the reply that he was a little ill, but would be all right eventually. Eventually? Just how long could 'eventually' be? She even forgot most of her worries for herself in worries over her brother.

But the morning of the fourth day brought an end to Her peace of mind, in the form of a message from Lord Tylar.

It arrived with her breakfast, an elegantly written note, folded and inserted beneath her plate—Lord Tylar never delivered messages in person if he could avoid it. She picked it up, and unfolded it, expecting the worst.

You will come to Lady Viridina's bower at the hour of the Skylark to discuss a matter of some importance. That was all it said, but that was enough to completely shatter her illusions of peace.

She stared at the note, her hand shaking only a little, and carefully put it down, her appetite quite gone. Discuss? Oh no, that was hardly what would happen—given that the note was in her father's handwriting and with his personal sigil impressed into the paper. No, Lord Tylar had orders for her, and her mother was the one, as bound by his will as any of his slaves, who would deliver them. Having Lady Viridina deliver these orders only proved that they were going to be unpleasant He always had his wife handle domestic orders that were going to bring trouble. He felt it was her job to ensure his domestic peace, even if it was his orders that were about to destroy that peace.