Wren leaned back in the chair which faced Arjun’s desk, until the front legs actually left the carpet. Through the paned glass windows, she could see the eastern courtyard, one of two around which the rectangular hospital had been built. It was well maintained, with cobblestone paths winding their way through herb gardens, benches and tables. There was even a swing hanging from two thick ropes tied to the great bough of a tall cottonwood tree that had been planted and grown by House Keria, eighteen years before.

  Now that the late-summer heat had finally broken, there were at least a dozen people wandering the paths, sitting at the tables, or tending the medicinal plants. Wren could tell the hospital workers from the patients at a glance: the former moved with purpose and confidence, while the latter walked only hesitantly, often with a cane or a hand on the arm of a healer.

  “As nice as it is to see you, Wren, I doubt you came here just to enjoy my tea and look at the courtyard,” Arjun said.

  Wren turned away from the window, lowered the legs of her chair to the floor again, and took a sip from the tea cup that her friend had given her. It was a Dakruiman blend, which was to say that unlike the plainer tea Lucania usually imported from the east, the tea leaves had been blended with ginger, cardamom, lemongrass, cloves, and cinnamon. Even though it wasn’t truly to her taste, Wren took a sip while she gathered her thoughts.

  “On our way back from the coast, Wild Cat got himself mauled by a cougar,” Wren began.

  “Yes, I’m aware,” Arjun said. He set his cup down on top of his desk, and stroked his beard with one hand. The habit amused Wren, because it seemed like every man who grew himself a beard did exactly the same thing. When he’d first grown it out, his hair had been pure black, but at thirty-nine years old, with the weight of the entire hospital on his shoulders, Arjun had already begun to have prominent streaks of white.

  “Your cousin’s daughter brought him here, as soon as they came back through the waystone,” the healer continued. “By that point he’d already done most of the healing with blood, of course, but she insisted that I check for infection, and to make sure it was closing up cleanly. He’ll be fine, by the way. If I could crack the magic that lets your people heal, it would change the world.”

  “Niece,” Wren muttered. “I usually just call her my niece; it’s too complicated, otherwise.”

  “Niece.” Arjun shrugged, lifted his cup of tea, and took another sip, clearly waiting for her to talk.

  “I went on ahead alone so that I could get back here and check in with Liv,” Wren said. “While I was flying above the lake, nearly at the rift, Ractia came to speak to me.”

  “Ractia?” Arjun put his cup down quickly enough that it rattled the tea plate and spilled a few drops of dark liquid. “Did she attack you?”

  Wren looked down into her tea and shook her head. “No, she didn’t attack me, though I did take a few swipes at her. I don’t think she was really even there; she was mostly a cloud of – petals, sort of, like rose petals only made of blood, all swirling around like leaves on the wind. But it was enough that she could speak.”

  She could feel her friend’s gaze on her, fixed as tightly as chains to a ship’s anchor. “Do you see anything?” Wren asked. She didn’t really expect that Ractia had done something to her, or she would have already asked either Liv or Sidonie to take a look.

  “I don’t see any contingent spells, or lingering persistent magic,” Arjun said, pronouncing the words slowly, his attention clearly focused more on the examination than on speaking. “And your blood looks normal. Well, normal for a Red Shield.” He sighed. “I presume Liv and Sidonie have already given you a clean bill of health, so to speak.”

  Wren said nothing, the words catching in her throat.

  “...you haven’t told them yet, have you?” Arjun sighed. “Wren –”

  “I had to talk to you first,” she interrupted.

  The clink of cup on plate told her that Arjun had reached for his tea again. A giddy, exhausted part of Wren’s mind wondered what either one of them would have found to do with themselves, while they were searching for words, if they hadn’t had a pot brewed.

  “I’m not going to keep a secret from her,” Arjun declared, finally. “Nothing that isn’t a medical secret, at any rate. If you came here to tell me you were pregnant –”

  Wren let out a bitter laugh, in spite of herself.

  “ – well, I wouldn’t tell her that. But I’m not going to keep anything about Ractia from her. And you shouldn’t either,” Arjun reminded her. “Liv’s your friend, just like she is mine. You’ve known her even longer. Whatever was said, if there’s anyone you can trust with it, it’s Liv.”

  “She offered to give Ghveris his body back,” Wren said. She forced herself to look up from her cup and meet Arjun’s eyes. “She said that everything she needed was in a single drop of his blood, and that the only reason they hadn’t done it back during the war was that they wanted to try to turn him into a better weapon.”

  Arjun frowned. “And you want to know if it’s possible.”

  “Yes,” Wren admitted, the word a barely audible whisper.

  “I don’t even know how to answer that,” Arjun said.

  “I need to know,” Wren insisted, her voice rising in spite of herself. “Try.”

  Arjun sighed, then set his cup back down onto the tea plate, leaned back in his chair, and looked up at the ceiling. “As near as I can tell, your people’s shape-changing is tied specifically to the blood in your bodies,” he began, the words coming slowly at first and then accelerating, as he grappled with the problem. “The blood is magic, there’s no doubt about that. It’s able to take on a sort of imprint, storing multiple potential forms. When you shapechange, you assume one of the forms impressed upon that blood. Theoretically, Ghveris’s original form should still be stored in his blood, along with all of the animal forms he was once able to turn into. The problem is that, by default, the wounds suffered by one form appear as equivalent wounds on all of the other forms, as well. As a result, should he try to shift normally, he would still be missing nine tenths of his body mass. And moving his organs, or altering their shape, could cause problems with the machinery and enchantments which preserve and maintain them inside of his armor.”

  “Is it possible, or not?” Wren demanded. Her hand shook badly enough that she splashed hot tea onto her leg, so she leaned forward and put both the tea cup and the plate on top of Arjun’s desk.

  “If we understood how to give the magic in the blood the right commands,” Arjun said, “Maybe. There’s already a self-healing function built in, but it isn’t designed to rebuild an entire body from scratch, and I don’t know how to change that. I thought that with the enchanted healing beds on the ring, we might be able to find a way, but…”

  “I know.” This part, they’d been over before, a dozen times or more over the long years since Ghveris had been awoken. “I’m not blaming you, Arjun,” Wren assured him. “I’m not blaming anyone. I know you all did your best to find a way.” There had been times she might not have been able to say that honestly, but truly, he and Liv had never given up. They’d simply run out of ideas.

  “Ractia is the one who made the great bats,” Arjun said, finally. “If anyone would know how to replace his body, it would be her. The difficulty is that we couldn’t ever actually trust her to do it. You know that, Wren, don’t you?”

  “I know.” Wren looked away, back out the window.

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  “What did she want in return?”

  Wren sighed. “She wanted us to let her do something. To not come after her, when she finally uses whatever machine she’s been building all these years.”

  Arjun crossed his arms over his chest. “You know you have to tell Liv.”

  “I know. I will,” Wren promised. But there was someone else she needed to tell, first.

  ?

  Wren found Ghveris in the courtyard of the palace, up on top of the mountain. Four carriages were being loaded, by a combination of palace servants and Liv’s personal guard. Thora was there, overseeing the operation from a position right next to the Antrian war-machine. The steward had a piece of parchment in her hand, and she moved her fingers across the lines of small, neat writing as each trunk, chest, or box was loaded.

  Ghveris’s burning blue gaze surveyed all of the men and women rushing about, and Wren knew that, where Thora was counting to be certain everything needed was being packed for the journey, he was watching for any sign of treachery or sabotage. After the guilds’ attempt against Liv’s life using black powder, there was no way he would leave even something as routine as packing a carriage to chance. Wren could imagine the conversation between Kaija and Ghveris that must have decided which of them took on this particular duty.

  She saw the moment those twin flames beneath Ghveris’s helm turned her way. He’d probably heard her coming even before she’d come in sight – Bheuv affected all the senses, after all, and rather than physical eyes or ears, he was relying entirely on enchantments. Wren took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and marched right up to him. “There’s something we need to talk about,” she said.

  Thora turned just enough to glance in their direction, and Liv’s former maid raised her eyebrows. “Don’t let me stop you,” she said, and made a shooing motion. “I’ve got things handled here. There’s no one loading that hasn’t already been checked out five ways or more.”

  Ghveris rocked for a moment, uncertainly.

  “You haven’t done anything wrong,” Wren assured him. “If anyone has, it’s me. Please. There’s something I need to tell you, and then we need to go and talk to Liv. I should’ve done it before now, but with everything that happened here – it was easy to make excuses.”

  “The north rampart,” Ghveris suggested, after a moment’s consideration. Wren nodded, and the two of them set off across the courtyard together, toward the nearest of the four stone stairs which led up atop the curtain walls.

  The north wall was the least heavily guarded, because there was the least to watch from that direction. To the south and east of the peak, clustered about the lowest slopes of the mountain up to the bank of the Aspen River, was the city. Wren knew that there was some discussion of expanding onto the east bank, as well; she’d been present for several planning sessions where prospective bridges were discussed.

  On the west slope, connected to the city by a well-maintained road, was the fort, where the bulk of the Alliance army was housed and where new soldiers were trained. There was a second fort, of more recent construction, at Al’Fenthia, but Wren suspected that by sheer virtue of proximity to the palace, this would remain the center of military leadership for years to come.

  But north of the mountain there was nothing, only the green slopes falling away to the valley below at either side, and beyond, the other summits of the range rising up. Even this late in summer, the highest were capped by snow; in some places, there were so many aspen trees along the slopes that it looked like someone had set up an entire forest of thin white spikes. Al Fenthia rested in those mountains, along with Gold Creek and Mountain Home, and a dozen or more smaller settlements, as well.

  Wren found herself a place to lean against the rampart, where the breezes that whipped around the peaks could tease her hair. No matter how long she lived at Bald Peak, she didn’t think that she would ever get used to the feeling of looking down from the summits of the mountains. It was the closest thing you could get to flying, without actually spreading your wings; but the sensation of looking down so far, with her human eyes instead of the senses of a bad or an owl, was disorienting. It felt like she was in the wrong body for what she was seeing, and it played with her sense of distance until she didn’t trust herself to judge what was near, and what was far.

  “You are upset,” Ghveris rumbled, from next to her. The nearest soldiers on watch gave them their space. “Is it about the boy who was hurt? I am told he recovered well, once they got blood into him, and that he fought fiercely to protect Henriette.”

  “No.” Wren shook her head. “No, I suppose I’m upset with myself. Because I know I shouldn’t let myself get fooled again, and I feel like an idiot for even considering it. It’s just like last time – she offers you exactly what you want, but I know it isn’t that simple.”

  Ghveris couldn’t frown, not really: his helm was built to protect the sensory enchantments layered beneath it, not to express emotion. But after so many years, and so many nights spent sharing her dreams with him, Wren could tell just as well. She could even picture what his face would look like.

  “Ractia found me, on my way back,” Wren admitted, the words tumbling out of her in a rush. “I swear I tried to fight her, but I don’t think she was even there in her body, and the knives didn’t do anything to her at all. She said –” Now, finally, she turned to look up into those blue flames. She wanted him to feel like she was meeting his eyes, even if it wasn’t really true. “She offered to give you your body back.”

  A hiss of steam escaped Ghveris’s machinery, the closest thing he could make to an exclamation, a sigh or a huff. Gently, he raised his enormous gauntlet and placed it on her back, being ever so careful of the weight, the immense strength his gears and inner workings could exert. He was always so gentle with her.

  “Her gifts are like poisoned food,” Ghveris rumbled. “Your father learned that.”

  Wren winced. Nighthawk Wind Dancer remained frozen in the vaults beneath the palace. Sidonie and Liv had confirmed that he’d been wrapped in some kind of enchantment; apparently, they could even see it, using Aluth, somehow etched into his very brain. Neither of them were confident they could break the magic without killing him. Their best hope was that killing Ractia would free him from her control. Of course, the Lady of Blood had offered to end that spell, as well.

  “I know,” she admitted. “I know that better than anyone.”

  “And yet?” he prodded her.

  “I want it,” Wren confessed. “I want to get you free of all that metal. I want to reach out and touch you for real, while we’re awake. I want to fall asleep in your arms, and wake up next to you in the morning.”

  Saying the words out loud somehow actually made it worse, and she nearly choked on the final words as they came out. Wren felt her eyes watering, and it was all she could do to blink away the tears.

  “If it could be, I would want it also,” Ghveris said. “But I do not think she can even do what she promises. If she could have, she would have done it a thousand years ago, instead of enlisting Antris to build me this body.”

  “That isn’t what she told me,” Wren told him. “She told me you were an experiment. That they thought they could make you a better weapon this way, than by giving your body back.”

  Ghveris shook his head. “She will say whatever she thinks you want to hear.”

  “Arjun thinks she might be able to do it,” Wren said. “He didn’t want to, I don’t think, but I wouldn’t stop until he gave me an answer. Something about how our blood contains the imprint of all our forms.”

  Her lover was silent for a long time after that.

  “What did she want in return?” he asked, finally.

  “To let her do whatever she’s going to do,” Wren said, and shrugged her shoulders. “She claims it won’t hurt anyone, and she also said that once she starts it’ll be obvious that she’s using whatever machine she’s built. She wants me to convince Liv not to attack her.”

  Ghveris shifted, turning his body toward her, and moved his gauntlet so that his fingers of enchanted steel brushed her cheek, the side of her face. “We must tell Liv,” he said.

  “I know,” Wren told him. “I’m going to. But I wanted you to hear it first. I didn’t want it to be a surprise. You deserve that, at least.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Wren. Saving me is not worth letting something horrible happen to the world. I am not that important.”

  “You are to me,” Wren whispered, squeezing her eyes closed. The tears came for real this time, and she didn’t try to stop them. Ghveris held her as well as he could, until they’d run dry, but no matter how gentle he was, steel was neither as warm, nor as soft, as living skin.

  Finally, they went down from the rampart together to seek out their friend.

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  Dramatis Personae

  Arjun Iyuz - Master Guildmage from Lendh ka Dakruim, professor of healing at Bald Peak, and running a hospital, as well. At least he gets his own office! [19 Rings of Mana]

  Ghveris, the Beast of Iuronnath - Formerly a Great Bat in service to Ractia, now the remains of his body form the heart of an Antrian juggernaut. The eternal stoic. [Mana Battery: 10 Rings]

  Thora - Former lady's Maid to Liv, now Steward of Bald Peak. Has checklists.

  Wren Wind Dancer - Daughter of Nighthawk, cousin of Calm Waters. Really not feeling great about things at the moment.