Free Elemental Magic: All-New Tales of the Elemental Masters by Mercedes Lackey Page B

Peninsula; he’d been startled by the sudden noise, but he hadn’t bolted. Learie flung himself into the saddle and touched his spurs to Storm’s flanks. The gelding sprang forward as if his tail were on fire, and Learie settled to the chase.
    The Fire Master had a head start, but he was riding a beast little better than a pony, one of the half-starved scrubs the peasants (the
rich
peasants) rode, unsuitable as remounts even when the cavalry units were desperate. And Storm was a big Irish Thoroughbred, with power and speed in every line of him.
    The wind whipped away the screams and shouts from the burning camp. In the brightening day, Learie had eyes for only one thing: the rider fleeing before him. The Fire Master was dressed in rough peasant clothing, a battered slouch hat pulled low over his face. He rode bareback, over grass gray with hoarfrost, hugging his pony’s ribs with his knees. As the thunder of Storm’s hoofbeats grew louder, the other rider glanced back once. Learie got a quick glimpse of a pale face and shadowed eyes before the rider turned his attention to coaxing the pony to greater speed.
    It was a doomed attempt.
    But just as Storm’s nose drew level with the pony’s flank, the grass beneath his hooves burst into flame.
    Learie had been expecting something of the sort. The moment he felt the air spark with magic, he gathered Storm into a jump. The gelding, used to the obstacles of the hunting field, obediently gathered himself and sailed into the air, landing delicately on the unburned turf beyond. Three more strides and he drew level with the pony. Laurie raised himself in his stirrups, and, kicking them free, launched himself at the other rider.
    They rolled over and over in the tall grass. The slouch hat went sailing.
    The first thing Learie noticed was the cascade of black hair that came tumbling free.
    The second thing was that the Fire Master—a woman!—was attempting to knife him in the ribs.
    “Here now!” he said indignantly.
    “French pig!” the woman spat. “Let me go!”
    “French!” Learie exclaimed. “Do I look French to you?” By now he was sitting on her, her wrists clasped in both hands. She hadn’t let go of the knife.
    “You look like a dog of a pig!” she said. “And I will make you regret the day your mother bore you!”
    “Just the one?” he asked lightly. Now that he could get a good look at her, he couldn’t imagine how he’d ever mistaken her for a man—or a peasant. Tumbled curls of shining black hair framed an oval face with clear pale skin. Her eyes were black as well, flashing with fury as she attempted to win her freedom. Skin to skin, he could feel the pulse of her Fire Magic like a separate heartbeat. “Look. You can’t just go around raising Fire like that. What if you kill someone?”
    She stared at him in astonishment.
    “I mean—you’re Spanish, aren’t you? And of course you hate the French. Who doesn’t? But didn’t your teachers ever tell you, well, the rules?”
    “Rules,” she said, her voice ugly. “You are English. You play at war as if it is a game. Where were your rules when the French came to Madrid? They came to us as friends, and then named themselves our conquerors! We fought—and they turned the city into an abattoir. The streets ran red with blood as they burned and looted. Nowhere was safe from them. Not even the convents. It was then I understood that the Blessed Santiago had chosen me as his instrument of retribution.”
    “You were a nun?” Learie asked. She glared at him in disgust.
I guess not.
He wracked his brain to make sense of what she’d said. Madrid had rebelled in the spring of 1808, and Murat had executed hundreds of citizens in bloody reprisal. She looked to be within a few years of his own age. She would have been fourteen or fifteen that year, an age at which many Adepts first gained the use of their gift. But . . .
    “Where was your father?” he asked.
    “He is English. He had to leave when