she continued to focus upon the tressym, doing her best to ignore the approaching danger. The only sign of her rising panic was a slight tremble in her hands.
Finally she heard something that broke her concentration.
'… this blasted ring,' the Hulorn said. 'It seems to bear a curse. It regenerates flesh but twists it to its own dark design.'
The other voice, also male, was unfamiliar. Now Larajin could hear feet crunching on the snow.
'Its magics seem to be linked to that of the wand,' the second man said with a wheeze. 'I cannot dispel the magic of one without affecting the other. You will have to make a choice: both, or neither.'
The tressym stirred under Larajin's hand. The lump was almost gone.
'By the gods! Who is that?'
Larajin looked up. Not more than a pace or two away stood the Hulorn, his half-serpentine face twisted with alarm and rage. Behind him was a tall, dark-skinned man who leaned on a knotted staff. Clad in smoke-gray robes that made him little more than a shadow in the snowy forest, he stared at Larajin with an expression that was equally surprised.
'Who is she?' he asked, his voice wheezing.
'What does it matter?' the Hulorn said. 'She's seen us together. She's seen this.' He held up his bird-taloned hand.
The dark-skinned man nodded. He moved his staff slightly. 'Shall I?' he whispered.
Fear coursed through Larajin in a violent shiver. She had no idea who the dark-skinned man was, but she understood the look in his eye. The Hulorn had just condemned her to death, and the dark-skinned man was to be her executioner.
Larajin crouched, too frightened to move, as the mage pointed the knobby tip of his staff at her. In that same moment, she felt the tressym stir under her hand. Finally healed, it rose to its feet and stretched brilliantly colored wings wide, fluttering them and testing their strength.
The Hulorn laid a hand on the staff. For a moment, Larajin thought she had been reprieved.
'Wait a moment,' the Hulorn said. 'The tressym cost two hundred suns. I don't want it damaged.'
With a loud howl, the tressym launched itself into the air, fleeing into the treetops. Larajin stood, holding up her hands and begging for her life. 'Please. I didn't mean to trespass. I found the injured tressym and just wanted to-'
The end of the dark-skinned man's staff crackled with magical force. Black sparks spat from its tip. Larajin started to turn but knew she'd never escape. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a bolt of crackling black force leap from the staff…
In that same instant a figure hurled itself from behind a tree. Still turning, Larajin caught only a glimpse of him: green cloak, feather-tipped braid, narrow tattooed face. Then the bolt from the staff took the leaping figure full in the chest. The wild elf screamed in agony, body suddenly going rigid. Sparks leaped from the tips of his fingers and booted toes, then his clothes and hair burst in tatters from his body. His charred husk fell to the ground, smoking against the snow.
Larajin gaped in horror at the blackened corpse. Now a sound registered in the silence left by the explosion.
An urgent whisper, in a language she didn't understand. Again, in the common tongue: 'Run! Run!'
She needed no urging. Somehow her feet found their footing in the slippery snow. She caught a glimpse of another cloaked figure leaping down from a tree branch onto the Hulorn, who had drawn his sword, and yet a third cloaked figure rushing out from behind a bush at the dark-skinned mage. As she ran through the woods, her heart pounding, she heard two more explosive crackles behind her.
With frantic haste, Larajin scrambled over the lip of the fountain and wrenched the grating free. She'd barely wriggled through when she heard thudding footsteps approaching the fountain above. Sobbing, she realized that they had followed her footsteps in the snow. They wouldn't be able to trail her through the sewers. However there were too many twists and turns in the darkened tunnels-and sewer water didn't hold any tracks.
She leaped down into the tunnel, and fled with splashing footsteps through the darkness.
Larajin slipped in through one of the servants' entrances of Stormweather Towers, still panting from her run across the city and stinking of sewer water. She'd seen no signs of pursuit-neither the Hulorn's guard, nor the dark wizard, nor even wild elves. She was reasonably certain the Hulorn wouldn't be able to identify her if he saw her again, since nobles tended to see only the uniform and not the servant underneath. That didn't mean she was safe, though.
As she slipped off her muck-covered boots and toweled her hair, Larajin could hear murmured voices coming from the stairs that led to the main part of the household. That would be the master, in the throes of yet another business discussion with the Talendars, a very important meeting that Larajin was supposed to be working.
A meeting presided over by Master Thamalon Uskevren. Her father.
The thought was still too incredible to believe.
Larajin heard a slight scratching at the door behind her. She opened it, and saw the tressym perched on the boot scraper outside. The winged cat walked into Stormweather Towers as though it had always lived there and rubbed against Larajin's leg.
'What is that creature doing here? That's an expensive pet-send it back to wherever it came from.'
The winged cat scuttled back out the door as Mister Cale marched down the hall. The head servant's deep- set eyes were blazing. He drew himself to a halt and pressed thin lips together, giving Larajin the full benefit of his scowl as he took in the fact that she was out of uniform. His nostrils sniffed.
'Just where,' he said, with heavy emphasis on each word, 'have you been?'
Larajin saw the tressym fly away, a splash of vibrant color amid the falling snowflakes, and shut the door behind her.
'To worship Sune, Sir,' she said meekly. 'The winged cat followed me back from the temple, and I was all this time trying to get rid of it.'
'Hmph.' Mister Cale seemed to accept this explanation. 'Get into uniform. At once. Tend to the master. There's an important meeting going on upstairs.'
Larajin bowed her head. Despite her posture, she was anything but contrite. She stared at her folded hands- at the fingers that had wrought the healing magic of Sune-or Hanali-or both.
I'm somebody, she thought to herself. Somebody who three elves just died to protect. Not just a servant-a square peg in a round hole-but something… else.
Everything was the same in the Uskevren household, but for Larajin, everything had changed. Master Thamalon the Elder, engrossed in his business meetings and haunted by memories of his past, was no longer just her employer. He was her father, and the people who had died when the original Stormweather Towers burned were Larajin's own kin. Mistress Shamur now was someone to be doubly cautious around. Larajin didn't even want to imagine the icy treatment she'd get, if the mistress knew that Larajin was the result of her husband cheating on her.
Mistress Thazienne-Tazi-was still the same roguish troublemaker she had always been, but now Larajin saw her with a different eye. The same blood flowed in their veins. Perhaps Larajin might be just as adventurous, one day.
Master Thamalon the Younger was still as much of a playboy and spendthrift as ever. Knowing that he was her half-brother gave Larajin a new empathy for the struggles he faced. Though she had heard the details only secondhand, while waiting at the Uskevren table, she now could appreciate the dangers Thamalon had faced while patching up the Foxmantle trade agreement.
Larajin even saw Tal in a new light, not just a friend who deliberately stepped over the line that divided master and servant but as a brother. She prayed that Tal would react in his usual, relaxed way to the news that they were kin.
Only one person in the Uskevren household had not changed, in Larajin's eyes. Mister Cale was still the same mysterious, slightly ominous figure he had always been.
Larajin edged past Mister Cale and marched briskly to the servant's change room to put on a uniform. Out of
