Lady grazed alone. Ramble, newly and permanently crippled, had a spot of honor in the sick stall within the hold stables as the wound closed, and from Jaime's daily reports, did well enough with the confinement, newly mannered and newly adored. Suliya cared for him, Jaime said. Suliya who'd turned down her family's urgent pleas to return home, who took lessons without argument, and who still cried over a man who'd had so much integrity he'd died for someone he'd once taken orders to kill.
Pleased as she was for Suliya, Lady knew how to snort in all the right places so Jaime knew that the young woman nonetheless had next to no chance of ever riding her again. And Jaime only laughed and said, "Good for you." After that, on occasion, Lady changed to Jess when she saw Jaime coming.
The first time, she was startled at the changes in her body—her exquisitely tender breasts, her propensity for the hiccups, and her odd wish for potatoes fried in hot spices. Jaime, too, must have noticed something, for after that someone came to the open pasture every day with an offering of light grains mixed with the drooling-good supplement Lady had never before needed. Otherwise Jaime didn't mention the changes; neither did Jess. They talked about Jaime's decision to move to Camolen permanently, and her plans to bring Sabre along and start a new school here in Anfeald. They talked about Camolen's excruciatingly slow recovery—for although the magic had stabilized, the services infrastructure remained down and the landscape ravaged—and of Arlen's intense amusement at the new Council's delirious relief at his reappearance. Jaime brushed out the snarled tangles of Jess's dun and black hair, expressing mild sorrow at its wild-horse raggedness.
As Lady, Jess spent considerable time staring at the dark spot along the hold's face that had once been her bedroom window—hers and Carey's. As Lady she missed him; as Jess she hurt beyond words, and so only became Jess for Jaime. She knew from Jaime that he'd healed well, worked hard, and spent as least as much time as she staring back out that window.
But there was a rightness in her time here. Enjoying her gallops, her dozing, the pleasure of a good roll, the increasing awareness of new life within her even so early in its growth. She accepted food but no one's touch; she kept her manners but made her own rules.
Finally, he came. With the insects buzzing a summer morning symphony in the rolling, horse-dotted fields around the hold, he walked the long path to her far pasture and paused by the always-open gate, a soft blanket tucked over his arm, an apple bulging out of one hip pocket, and uncharacteristic uncertainty shadowing his eyes and making worry lines in his forehead.
In his free hand he held not a bridle, but a bitless sidepull.
He, who had never ridden Lady once she'd been Jess. Never talked about it. Never faced the physical reality of who she was.
She came to the gate and dropped her head for the sidepull, a simple headstall with reins attached to a soft cavesson. And then she moved next to the old tree stump by the gate, used by years' worth of riders for just this reason. Carey left the blanket over the gate, stirring gently in the breeze, and the apple by the gate post. He stood on the tree stump for a moment, facing her sturdy dun back with its thick black stripe, the one he'd traced so often in its fainter iteration down her human spine.
Patience.
The very patience he'd given her in her early training, in her struggles with balance and the restraint of her natural exuberance and acceptance of rules, she now gave back to him. Sweeping her long tail at the flies, flicking an ear at the squeaky twitter of birds, she waited.
Finally, his weight settled onto her back, as gently as ever.
How she'd missed it!
After a moment he relaxed, giving her the faint lift of seat that once meant move off and now meant he was ready if she was.
She took him out into the woods, letting him ease into the habit of working with her—of supporting her when she needed it, of reminding her and pointing things out to her instead of commanding and ordering.
In truth, it was all he'd ever done once she'd come into her own as a courier horse; all he'd ever needed to do. He had somehow forgotten that along the way.
They returned home at a passage, an airy floating trot that Jaime had taught her and Carey had never felt, and he laughed out loud when she offered it. She stopped at the gate, a perfect square halt, neck arched and high, reins loose on her neck. He hesitated, much as he had when mounting—a reluctance of a different nature. But he slid off, and when she swung her head around for removal of the sidepull, he scratched the itchy spots behind her ears just like he always had, running a wistful hand along her spellstones.
Not many of them left.
She gave a good shake, the summer breeze cool on her back where he'd been sitting, and eased into the pasture, realizing for the first time that the rest of the hold had limited today's activities to the nearer pastures. Horses going in and out, grooms spreading wheelbarrows of stall pickings, the daily round of fence inspections . . . no one came near.
Carey lifted the blanket and settled it over her withers, a soft fold of material that came to her elbows and smelled of their rooms even though she'd never seen it before. And then, astonishingly—awkward as ever after he'd been riding and his body started to stiffen—he sat before her.
"I almost didn't have the chance to say this." He hesitated, struggling with the words even now, his face full of the death he'd touched. "I almost died, not having you, and it was worse than the dying itself. I had to think about that. A lot."
She bobbed her head. She knew.
"Once," he said, "you came and sat at my feet, newly human and still willing to give yourself up to me."
She stood stock-still, hoping too hard to move.
Carey buried his face in his hands, then scrubbed those hands over his lean features and through his hair, leaving it entirely mussed, a warm, dark-rooted blond in the sunlight. "It's got to go both ways, Jess. It's taken me far too long to realize it."
She gave a huge sigh of relief, of hope fulfilled and heart overflowing. She changed for him. The blanket was wonderful about her human shoulders, soft and caressing and full of bright colors her horse's eye hadn't been able to appreciate. But it did nothing to hide the swell of the child within her, the early months of the long equine gestation translated into a shorter human term.
Carey froze, taken completely by surprise; struggling. He knew where she'd been, who she'd been with, in those days of running from easternmost Camolen to Anfeald. He knew her mare's seasons. He floundered, muscles stark as a clenched jaw—and then he glanced up to the window she'd watched for so long, looking at that room where he'd almost died. And he let out a long, slow breath and he said softly, "Hey, Braveheart."
She sat in the grass next to him, surprised by her own awkwardness and of the instant opinion it was best to be a horse if pregnant. She said simply, "We were horses. We did horse things."
"Mm," he said thoughtfully. He touched her long, ragged hair; he smoothed the thin healing scar on her shoulder, his outward calm belied by the unsteady nature of his touch. "Maybe that's the way it had to be."
She thought of the moments she'd sat beside the tree and cried, coming to accept this very thing. She looked away from him. "Yes. I think so."
He startled her with a playful poke to the same leg he'd been stroking. "Ay," he said, a clear imitation of Suliya. "How about you come stay with me for a while, and we'll do human things?"
She said, "Yes."
For Carey—finally—awakening.
For Dun Lady's Jess . . .
Legacy fulfilled.