“You can come in now.”

Brian entered, then stepped back abruptly.

“It’s all right,” Snake said. “They’re calm.”

Brian retreated no farther but watched the serpents carefully. Their heads turned in unison whenever Snake moved; their tongues flicked out and in as the cobra and the rattler peered at Brian and tasted his odor.

“I brought the child’s papers,” Brian said. “They prove you are her guardian now.”

Snake coiled Sand around her right arm and took the papers left-handed. Brian gave them to her gingerly. Snake looked at them with curiosity. The parchment was stiff and crinkly, heavy with wax seals. The mayor’s spidery signature was on one corner, Ras’s opposite, elaborate and shaky.

“Is there any way Ras can challenge this?”

“He could,” Brian said. “But I think he will not. If he claims he was compelled to sign, he will have to say what the compulsion was. And then he would have other… compulsions… to explain. I think he prefers a voluntary retreat to a publicly enforced one.”

“Good.”

“Something else, healer.”

“Yes?”

He handed her a small heavy bag. Inside, coins touched with the clear hard sound of gold. Snake glanced at Brian quizzically.

“Your payment,” he said, and offered her a receipt and a pen to sign it with.

“Is the mayor still afraid he’ll be accused of bonding?”

“It could happen,” Brian said. “It’s best to be on guard.”

Snake amended the receipt to read “Accepted for my daughter, in payment of her wages for horse training,” signed it, and handed it back. Brian read it slowly.

“I think that’s better,” Snake said. “It’s only fair to Melissa, and if she’s being paid she obviously isn’t bonded.”

“It’s more proof you’ve adopted her,” Brian said. “I think it will satisfy the mayor.”

Snake slipped the coin bag into a pocket and let Mist and Sand slide back into their compartments. She shrugged. “All right. It doesn’t matter. As long as Melissa can leave.” Suddenly she felt depressed, and she wondered if she had held so firmly and arrogantly to her own will that she had disarranged the lives of others to no benefit for them. She did not doubt she had done the right thing for Melissa, at least in freeing her from Ras. Whether Gabriel was better off, or the mayor, or even Ras…

Mountainside was a rich town, and most of the people seemed happy; certainly they were more content and safer now than they had been before the mayor took office twenty years before. But what good had that done the children of his own household? Snake was glad to be leaving, and she was glad, for good or ill, that Gabriel was going too. “Healer?”

“Yes, Brian?”

From behind, he touched her shoulder quickly and withdrew. “Thank you.” When Snake turned a moment later, he had already, silently, disappeared.

As the door to her room swung softly shut, Snake heard the hollow thud of the big front door closing in the courtyard. She looked out the window again. Below, Gabriel mounted his big pinto horse. He looked down into the valley, then slowly turned until he faced the window of his father’s room. He gazed at it for a long time. Snake did not look across at the other tower, for she could tell from watching the young man that his father did not appear. Gabriel’s shoulders slumped, then straightened, and when he glanced toward Snake’s tower his expression was calm. He saw her and smiled a sad, self-deprecating smile. She waved to him. He waved back.

A few minutes later Snake still watched as the pinto horse switched his long black and white tail and disappeared around the last visible turn in the northbound trail. Other hooves clattered in the courtyard below.

Snake returned her thoughts to her own journey. Melissa, riding Squirrel and leading Swift, looked up and beckoned to her. Snake smiled and nodded, threw her saddlebags over her shoulder, picked up the serpent case, and went to join her daughter.

Chapter 9

The wind in Arevin’s face felt cool and clean. He was grateful for the mountain climate, free of dust and heat and the ever present sand. At the crest of a pass he stood beside his horse and looked out over the countryside Snake had been raised in. The land was bright and very green, and he could both see and hear great quantities of free-flowing water. A river meandered through the center of the valley below, and a stone’s throw from the trail a spring gushed across mossy rock, His respect for Snake increased. Her people did not migrate; they lived here all year around. She would have had little experience with extreme climates when she entered the desert. This was no preparation for the black sand waste. Arevin himself had not been prepared for the central desert’s severity. His maps were old; no member of the clan still living had ever used them. But they had led him safely to the other side of the desert, following a line of trustworthy oases. It was so late in the season that he had met no one at all: no one to ask advice about the best route, no one to ask about Snake.

He mounted his horse and rode down the trail into the healers’ valley.

Before he encountered any dwellings he reached a small orchard. It was unusual: the trees farthest from the road were full-grown, gnarled, while the nearest ones were merely saplings, as if a few trees had been planted every year for many years. A youth of fourteen or fifteen lounged in the shade, eating a piece of fruit. When Arevin stopped, the young man glanced up, rose, and started toward him. Arevin urged his horse across the grassy edge of the meadow. They met in a row of trees that seemed perhaps five or six years old.

“Hi,” the young man said. He picked another piece of fruit and held it out toward Arevin. “Have a pear? The peaches and the cherries are all gone and the oranges aren’t quite ripe yet.”

Arevin saw that, in fact, each tree bore fruit of several different shapes, but leaves of only a single shape. He reached uncertainly for the pear, wondering if the ground the trees grew on was poisoned.

“Don’t worry,” the young man said. “It isn’t radioactive. There aren’t any craters around here.”

At this Arevin drew back his hand. He had not said a word, yet the youth seemed to know what he was thinking.

“I made the tree myself, and I never work with hot mutagens.”

Arevin had no idea what the boy was talking about except that he seemed to be assuring him that the fruit was safe. He wished he understood the boy as well as the boy understood him. Not wishing to be impolite, he took the pear.

“Thank you.” Since the youth was watching him both hopefully and expectantly, Arevin bit into the fruit. It was sweet and tart at the same time, and very juicy. He took another bite. “It’s very good,” he said. “I’ve never seen a plant that would produce four different things.”

“First project,” the boy said. He gestured back toward the older trees. “We all do one. It’s pretty simple-minded but it’s traditional.”

“I see,” Arevin said.

“My name’s Thad.”

“I am honored to meet you,” Arevin said. “I am looking for Snake.”

“Snake!” Thad frowned. “I’m afraid you’ve had a long ride for nothing. She isn’t here. She isn’t even due back for months.”

“But I could not have passed her.”

Thad’s pleasant and helpful expression changed to one of worry. “You mean she’s coming home already? What happened? Is she all right?”

“She was well when I saw her last,” Arevin said. Surely she should have reached her home well ahead of him, if nothing had happened. Thoughts of accidents, unlike viper bites, to which she would be vulnerable, assailed him.

“Hey, are you all right?”

Thad was beside him, holding his elbow to steady him.

“Yes,” Arevin said, but his voice was shaky.

“Are you sick? I’m not done with my training yet but one of the other healers can help you.”