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Isana looked up fro boith a faintly irritated frown "That boy is going to get himself into more trouble than he can explain his way out of, one day" Wan autuh the s of Bernard-holt&039;sin the wide ovens filled the roo on the roast turning over the coals Isana&039;s back hurt froun well before the sun rose, and there wasn&039;t going to be a chance to rest any time in the immediate future
Whenever she had a moment to spare fro bowl, using Rill to keep a cautious eye upon the Kordholters and Warner&039;s folk Warner and his sons had added their efforts to that of Elder Frederic, ants, as he and his brawny son, Younger Frederic, cleaned out the half-buried stables of the vast beasts of labor
Kord and his youngest son lazed in the courtyard The elder boy, Aric, had taken up an axe and had been splitting logs for the duration of the y with physical effort The tension in the air throughout the , even to those without an ounce of watercraft in their bodies
The hold women had fled the kitchen&039;s heat to take their etable soup and yesterday&039;s bread, together with a selection of cheeses they had thrown together then taken out into the steadholt&039;s courtyard to eat The weary autumn sun shone pleasantly down on the courtyard, the warstones sheltered froh stone walls Isana did not join the in the courtyard would have sickened her, and she wanted to save back her strength and self-discipline for as long as she could, in the event that she had to intervene
So Isana ignored the rumble in her own belly and focused on her work, a portion of her thought reserved for her fury&039;s perceptions
"Aren&039;t you going to eat, mistress Isana?" Beritte looked up fro the skins fro the peeled roots into a basin of water The girl&039;s pretty face had been lightly touched with rouge, and her already alluring eyes with kohl Isana had warned herfor such nonsense, but there she was, hollybells in her hair and her bodice laced with deliberate wickedness beneath her breasts-er to admire herself in every shiny surface she could find than to help prepare the evening&039;s banquet Isana had gone out of her way to find chores to occupy the girl&039;s day Beritte often enjoyed seeing young men compete with one another for her attention, and between her bodice and the sweet scent of the hollybells in her hair, she&039;d have the one another-and Isana had far too much on her mind to be bothered with anyher up and down, before she reached for the poker and thrust it back into the oven, into the coals where one of two tiny fire furies that regulated the oven wasn&039;t doing its job She raked the poker through the them, and saw the flames dance and quiver
a bit reater life "As soon as I have a irl
"Oh," Beritte said, someistfully "I&039;m sure we&039;ll be finished soon"
"Just peel, Beritte" Isana turned back to the counter and her bowl The water within stirred and then quivered upward, resolving itself into a face- her own, but er Isana smiled warmly down at the fury Rill always remembered what Isana had looked like, the day they&039;d found one another, and always appeared in the sairl not quite Beritte&039;s age, had gazed down into a quiet, lovely pool
"Rill," Isana said, and touched the surface of the water The liquid in the bowl curled over her finger and then swirled around quietly in response to her "Rill," Isana said again "Find Bernard" She pressed an ih the contact of her finger: her brother&039;s sure, silent steps, his ru, quiet voice, and his broad hands "Find Bernard," she said again
The fury quivered and swirled the water about-then departed the bowl, passing through the air in a quiet wave Isana felt prickling along her skin, and then vanished, down through the earth
Isana lifted her head and focused on Beritteon, Beritte?"
"I&039;ht red and turned back to her peeling, knife flashing over the tuber, stripping dark skin from pale flesh "I don&039;t knohat you mean, mistress"
Isana placed her hands on her hips "I think you do," she said her tone crisp and severe "Beritte, you can either tell ot the flowers now, or you can wait until I find out, later"
Isana felt Beritte&039;s fluttering panic, dancing around on the edges of the girl&039;s voice as she spoke "Honestly, Mistress, I found the for me at my door I don&039;t knoho-"
"Yes you do," Isana said "Hollybells don&039;t justthereat furies, I&039;ll see to it that you suffer whatever is appropriate anyway"
Beritte shook her head, and one of the hollybells fell from her hair "No, no, irl inwardly cringe "I never harvested any of them Honestly, I-"
Isana&039;s temper flared, and she snapped, "Oh, Beritte You aren&039;t old
enough to be able to lie to me I&039;ve a banquet to cook and a truthfind to prepare for, and I&039;ve not time to waste on a spoiled child who thinks that because she&039;s grown breasts and hips that she knows better than her elders"
Beritte looked up at Isana, flushing darker with aard huer "Jealous, mistress?"
Isana&039;s te cold, icy For just aelse in the kitchen, all the events and disastrous possibilities that faced the steadholt that day, and focused her attention on the buxoirl For only a moment, she lost control of her ee rise within her
Every kettle in the kitchen abruptly boiled over, stea out in a cloud that curved around Isana and flowed toward the girl, scalding water racing over the floor in a loave toward her seat
Isana felt Beritte&039;s defiance transfor as she stared at Isana&039;s face Beritte thrust her hands out as she stumbled out of her chair, the feeble wind sprites she had collected slowing the onco step over the nearest ar water and ran toward the kitchen doors, sobbing
Isana clenched her fists and closed her eyes, wrenching herherself to take deep breaths, to regain control of her ee howled inside her like a living thing trying to tear its way free of her She could feel its claws scraping at her belly, her bones She fought it down, forced it away frohts, and as she did the stea the thick, rough glass of the s The kettles cal naturally over the floor
Isana stood a stea slow, deep breaths She&039;d done it again She&039;d let tooin another color her own thoughts, her own perceptions Beritte&039;s insecurity and defiant anger had glided into her and taken root in her own thoughts and feelings-and she had let it happen
Isana lifted one slim hand and rubbed at her te able to hear another kind of sound- sound that rubbed against one&039;s terating her skull raw, that blisters would rise on her face and scalp froainst her
Still, there was little she could do about it now, but to control herself and to bear what came One couldn&039;t open one&039;s eyes and later simply decide not to use theht to her, but she could never shut theether It was simply a fact a watercrafter of her power had to live with
One ofto the tiny furies in the spilled water on the floor, beckoning theether in the center of the floor into afor all the spare droplets to roll in from the far corners of the kitchen
The reflection of her own face looked back at her, sirl&039;s She winced, thinking of the face Rill showed her every time the fury came Perhaps it was not so different from her own
She lifted her hand and traced her fingers over her cheek She had a pretty face, still Most of forty years, and she barely looked as though she had lived twenty of theht look as old as thirty, if she lived another four decades, but no older There were no lines on her face, at the corners of her eyes, though faint shades of frost stirred in her auburn hair
Isana rose and regarded the woman reflected in the water Tall Thin Too thin, for a woe, with scarcely any curve of hip or breast She awky child True, she th than any child could ranted her an age and dignity not strictly warranted by her appearance-and true, everyone in the whole of the Calderon Valley knew her by naht or reputation as one of theto change the simple and heartless fact that she looked like a boy in a dress Like nothing any man would want to marry
Isana closed her eyes for a moment, pained Thirty-seven years old, and she was alone No suitors, naturally No garlands to wear, or dances to plan for, or flirtations to plot That was all long past her, even with the apparent youth her watercrafting bestowed on her The youth that kept her always a bit distant froe-women with husbands, families
She opened her eyes and idly bade the spilled water to an sweeping over it obediently, gathering up bits of dust and debris as it did, and Isana went to open the door
Cold air poured in, sharp contrast to the stea breaths
She had to ad her, not si too many of the adolescent&039;s intense e true as well Beritte had all the luscious curves and rondure that would draw any man in the Valley to her-and indeed, she had half a dozen of theh the boy tried to deny it Beritte Fir children
The way no one had thought Isana would ever be able to
She pressed her lips together and opened her eyes Enough There was too much work to be about to let an old pain rise to the surface, now Thunder rumbled over the Valley&039;s floor, and Isana crossed to the northern , opened it, and eyed the mountain peak to the north Garados loo further down his shoulders and toward the valley floor, warning of the coathered around his head, and as she watched, they flashed with dark green lightning, sending another ru across the Valley Lilvia, then-Garados&039;s wife, the stor up clouds for another assault on the people of the Valley She would wait all day, gathering the warmth of the sun into her cloud-herds and then send the across the Valley in a rush of thunder and wind and, like as not at this time of the year, sleet and icy rain
Isana pressed her lips together Intolerable If only a decently gifted windcrafter would settle down in the Valley, they ht blunt the worst of Thara&039;s storms before they ever reached the steadholts-but then, any windcrafter that strong would be serving as a Knight or one of the Cursors
She walked to the sink and touched the spigot, alerting the furies inside that she desired water from the well A moment later, it spilled out, cold and clear, and she filled a pair of pans before letting the furies stop the flow of it, then went around the kitchens and refilled the water in the pots that had boiled over Ait out in its pans, and slipped the next round of pans into their places She glanced around the kitchens oncewas in place The puddle was finished with the floor, so she shooed it out the door to ease into the earth beside the threshold and sink back into the ground
"Rill?" Isana called "What&039;s taking so long?"
The water bubbled and stirred in her scrying bohich doubled as herbowl most days), and then three little splashes announced Rill&039;s
presence Isana crossed back to the bowl, drew her braid back over her shoulder, and regarded the surface of the water intently as the ripples stilled
The fury showed her a dinant pool somewhere in the Pine Hollows A e in the bowl and then was gone Isana shook her head Rill&039;s ies were not always entirely clear, but it see flock
She murmured a dismissal to Rill and set the bowl aside-and then noticed a sudden lack of sound from the courtyard A breath later, the tension levels of Bernardholt swelled into painful intensity
Isana steeled herself against the perceptions and walked briskly out of the kitchen She kept her breathing steady and held herself with rigid confidence The holdfolk were pressed shoulder to shoulder, facing the center of the courtyard They were silent, but for faint mutters and worried whispers
"Kord," she murmured Isana stepped forward, and the holdfolk h the onlookers until she could see the scene in the center of the courtyard
Twoone another in the courtyard, and the air between them practically thrummed with tension Kord stood with his ar and trereasy beard fraer beneath his heavy brows
Facing him stood Steadholder Warner, a tall s and a head that shone bold but for a fringe of wispy grey hair Warner&039;s narrow, chiseled face had flushed bright red in anger, and the air around hi off an oven
"All I&039;," Kord drawled, "is that if that little slut of yours can&039;t keep her legs together and men out from between them, it&039;s your problem, friend Not mine"
"Shut your mouth," Warner snarled