CHAPTER 3

THE next morning Gabrielle found them both awake and talking quietly together in their own language. This time Danaïs smiled when he saw her.

“Lady Gabrielle,” he said. “Féolan has told me what you did yesterday. You have saved my life, and if I can ever serve you it will be my honor.” Gabrielle thought he delivered this rather formal speech as if he had planned it out ahead of time. Probably he had, she realized. If you have to say something important in a language not your own, you probably do figure it out ahead of time.

She smiled warmly. “You owe me nothing. To be able to do this—it’s all the reward I need. But I thank you for your courtesy.” She checked for fever, took his pulse and finally looked at the wound itself. Féolan, watching, gasped as the bandage came away.

Danaïs tensed. “Is it bad?”

“Nay, Danaïs,” whispered Féolan, looking from the leg to Gabrielle with frank astonishment. “Nay. ‘Tis healing wondrously fast.”

Gabrielle’s long vigil by the bedside had been rewarded. The wound was clean, uninflamed and visibly shallower than yesterday. It was a long, long way from the life-threatening gash Danaïs had arrived with.

“Could you eat some broth, or a little bread, do you think?” asked Gabrielle.

Danaïs grinned. “I think I could eat almost anything!” he replied.

“That’s what I like to hear from a patient. I’ll have breakfast sent down,” said Gabrielle.

“Could you have them send a tray for me too, Gabrielle?” asked Féolan. “You go have breakfast with your family.”

KING JEROME WAS lifting a rather large piece of ham to his mouth as Gabrielle entered the room. “So you decided to favor us with your presence at last,” he growled, fork suspended in midair. “Your family not worthy of your company anymore, is it?” Blue eyes glared at her from under wiry brows, and Jerome’s freckled complexion darkened to angry brick red. This performance had fooled many people, but not Gabrielle.

“Good morning, Father,” she replied. “It’s good to see you too.”

Tristan cackled. “Why don’t you give it up, Father? It never works.”

Solange, Gabrielle’s mother, patted her husband’s shoulder. “There, dear. You do look very fierce, you know. Just not to us.”

She turned to her daughter. “How is your patient, Gabrielle?” she asked. “We met the other one, Féolan, last night at dinner. He is quite charming. But he said his friend was terribly hurt.”

“He’s doing fine, I’m glad to say.” Gabrielle helped herself to bread and eggs. “Eating breakfast even as we speak, I hope. Oh, and that young lad, Philippe, who fell off the roof, just a dislocated shoulder, after all. Though it’s my belief he jumped.”

“You saved the leg, then?” asked Jerome. He looked at his daughter with open pride as she nodded. “It’s plain amazing, isn’t it? I don’t know where you come by that gift, girl, but you leave any bonemender I’ve ever met in the dust.”

“It’s not a competition, Father,” Gabrielle said primly, but she was pleased nonetheless and she let it show.

“And they really are Elves,” marveled Solange. Small and dark-haired, with neat, quick gestures, Queen Solange hailed from the north mainland, while Jerome’s sandy coloring, big bones and blunt manner all proclaimed his “Islander” ancestry. “I’ve never met one before, though my parents used to speak of seeing them now and again. I wonder what brought them our way?”

“I intend to find that out today,” announced Tristan.

Gabrielle snorted. “Subtle as ever, Tris.” She adored her brash younger brother, but their personalities could hardly have been more different.

THAT DAY THEY fell into a kind of rhythm that set the pattern for the days that followed. Féolan stayed through the morning, helping his friend pass the long hours of recovery. When Gabrielle arrived with lunch for them all, he was singing, accompanying himself on a slim instrument he called a lythra, and the sweet lilt of it was so lovely that she could not bring herself to interrupt but stood by the door listening until the soup got cold. Tristan showed up at lunch too and, as Danaïs seemed to be doing well, was permitted to stay. “But no interrogations, Tris. The man needs peace.”

By the time they had eaten Danaïs looked tired, and Gabrielle shooed the others away. Tristan was more than happy to commandeer Féolan. He offered to ride out with him and show him the surrounding estates, and Féolan was pleased to join him. Gabrielle, meantime, got down to business: first more medicine to relieve the relentless torment of the wound. Then she bathed Danaïs, changed his bandages, and while he napped, worked on healing his leg.

Dinner they took in turns, but Féolan would not budge from Danaïs’s side through the long evenings. Gabrielle often joined them for a couple of hours, talking quietly or listening to them sing. Though she knew none of the words, the music seemed to speak directly to her heart.

On the third evening, Danaïs asked after the horses.

“They are well cared for here,” Féolan assured him. “And I check on them daily.”

“You seem very attached to your horses,” Gabrielle remarked. She remembered the day of the accident, when Féolan had seen to the horses even when his friend was near death. She loved her own horse, but not that much.

“How not?” asked Danaïs. “They are loyal, patient friends, who give themselves to our needs. We must be friends in return.”

“You talk as though they were Human,” said Gabrielle, then laughed at her own words. “Or should I say, Elvish?”

Féolan smiled. “It’s true, though. We are careful of our horses in Human settlements because Humans do not see animals as we do and sometimes mistreat them. I have seen gentle beasts beaten with sticks more than once.”

Gabrielle could not deny it, remembered her own hot indignant tears when as a child she had first witnessed such a thing.

“You ride with no reins,” Gabrielle said. “How do you do that?”

Féolan shrugged. “They carry us of their own will, and they understand what we ask of them. If there is trust between horse and rider, there is no need to be pulling this way and that.”

They understand what we ask. Gabrielle’s mind refused to accept the phrase at face value, but in her heart she knew it was the plain truth. She remembered how Féolan had spoken to his horse at the gatehouse and how the horse had stood like a statue for so long.

“You talk to them,” she whispered. They nodded. Gabrielle thought of her gray mare, Cloud, and felt unaccountably close to tears. She said no more.

By the fourth day Danaïs was sitting up and gingerly moving the leg. As his body grew stronger, his cheerful personality emerged. So did his love of good conversation. His command of Krylaise, the language of Verdeau, improved hour by hour. Even Tristan, with his limited tolerance for sitting in any one place for long, was happy to take shifts in the sick room when its patient was awake.

AND TRISTAN, TRUE to his word, wasted no time in unearthing information about their guests’ travels. At the breakfast table one morning, he reported his findings.

“They are scouts for the Elves. Féolan is the head scout, but I gather they are few in number. He says the Elves have become so isolated, living in little hidden pockets in the northern forests, that without the scouts they wouldn’t know what’s going on in the larger world.”

“A scout,” grunted Jerome. “Not much more than a foot soldier, is it? And we seat him at our table like a high nobleman.”

Gabrielle winced. The stock her father placed on rank had bothered her ever since she had become a bonemender. Traveling with her teacher, Marcus, to the outlying villages treating commoners and nobles alike had taught her that nobility, and its opposite, could be found among all people.

“I’m not so sure about that,” Tris replied. He reached for the teapot. “He seems to know the decision-makers and a lot about their overall strategies, at any rate. He’s the person who saw the need for the scouts in the first place and persuaded their leaders, the Council, I think he called it, to establish regular forays.” Tris gulped at the scalding tea, wedged most of a slice of bread into his mouth and swallowed just enough to draw air before adding, “He seemed about to say more at that point but stopped himself. Said something about it not being the time. Very intriguing.”

“You may find out soon enough, Tristan,” said Solange. “Féolan has requested a formal audience with us. He says he has news that could affect the security of the kingdom.”

“I’ve asked the First General and the Head of King’s Council to attend,” said Jerome. “You two should be there as well. You know him best, and we will need to judge the credibility of this ‘news’ of his. Ten bells, in the west study. Let’s hope it’s worth our while.”