Free Moving Water by Sylvia Kelso Page A

A’sparre, perhaps.”
    â€œWe all make our own mistakes.”
    â€œI do agree.” She drew it out. Taunt. Riposte. Threat. “Welcome to Assharral.”
    â€œHow kind of you. It’s pleasant to be among kin.”
    â€œYou astonish me.”
    â€œYou astonish me . Moontree. Obviously a descendant of Lossian and Fengela. You don’t know the Moontree’s roots?”
    â€œAll commoners are fanatic about history.”
    â€œAh, my blood goes back to the Flametree itself. Lossian’s own line. A little later, of course, than yours.”
    â€œAnd, of course, so worthily.”
    His eyes danced. “I never heard Lossian went in for marrying.”
    â€œSo little point. For those who can get children, that is.”
    I caught my breath. But he had his shield today. “Or those who can but won’t.”
    â€œSome of us,” she stretched, a lazy cat, “have no need.”
    â€œFountains do run dry . . . eventually.”
    Again that tiny, triumphant glitter. “And now you are here, what will you ask of me?”
    He let his eye travel down her body’s length. The glitter brightened. “I am, unhappily . . . fastidious.”
    â€œAnd that place is occupied.”
    â€œTemporarily.”
    â€œIn his case, at least.”
    â€œIn every case, I find. But perhaps it’s different, in Hethria?”
    He gave a sudden spurt of laughter. “Very different!”
    â€œThen I should warn you. Assharrans respect their beasts.”
    I think I gasped. He merely grinned. “Pouring the lees already?”
    â€œDressing to fit my company.”
    â€œDear, dear! Madam, you seem to have wounded you.”
    â€œI can forgive myself.”
    â€œThat must be easy, for a—divinity.”
    â€œDivinely so. One sees everything.”
    â€œI daresay,” he murmured, “that you do.” There was a tiny stress on the “you.”
    â€œYou wonder that I expected you?”
    â€œOne hardly expects an enchantress to boast of prentice arts.”
    I had a fleeting impression that he had caught her out, forcing a deflection of the attack. “How is Fengthira nowadays?”
    â€œHappy. A rare thing, I find.”
    â€œI daresay it’s easy to be happy with a—horse.”
    â€œEasier than with men, it would seem.”
    â€œOne does grow bored with them.”
    â€œI daresay a—divinity—does.”
    â€œAh, then you’ll be lucky, won’t you?”
    â€œSo I think. And Fengthira too.”
    Her eyelids drooped. “Her age is showing, I expect.”
    â€œSome of us do it gradually,” he sounded equable. “Some wait a long time, then do it all at once.”
    Her lips curved up. I wanted to shout, as to a careless swordsman, Watch out, it’s coming now!
    â€œSome of us never do it.”
    â€œSome have imagined so.”
    The thillians in her bracelet spurted blue-white fire. She had shifted, reaching for something in the seat corner. Her hands rose. The great dew-globe glistened between them, shimmering against scarlet silk, shattering the sun, its own depths unmoved, profound and colorless.
    â€œAnd some of us”—the ambush was sprung, the triumph blatant—“need not imagine it at all.”
    His eyes had shot wide. He went stiff all over, his face blank. Not control, but shock.
    She caressed the globe, looking under her lashes, savoring the foretaste of victory.
    â€œYou know what it is.”
    He sounded breathless. “I know.”
    â€œYou thought it was the fountain, didn’t you?”
    â€œI didn’t use Pharaone.” Though he spoke sharply, the word war was forgotten. “It would have made no difference. That”—he gestured with his eyes—“wears a Ruanbraxe. No aedr would realise till he saw.”
    Again I had the sense of incomprehension matching mine, bypassed as irrelevant. “And you know what can be