“Looks like you’ve spent a night, she‘enedra, ” the Shin’a‘in said quietly, as Kethry stood up. “How’s the boy?”

“He’ll live,” she said, tucking a strand of hair under her scarf. “In fact, I think he’ll be up and around before too long. I held him stable from a distance as soon as Kero told me what had happened, and I managed to get the one Healing spell What‘s-her-name taught me to work for a change.”

Tarma shook her head, and grimaced. “I never could understand it. Adept-class mage, and half the time you can’t Heal a cut finger.”

“Power has nothing to do with it,” Kethry retorted, “and it’s damned frustrating. ”

“Well, if you ask me, I think your success at Healing has as much to do with how desperate you are to make it work as anything,” the fighter replied, shifting her weight from one foot to the other and flexing her aching arches. “Every time you’ve really needed it to work, it has. It’s only failed you when you were trying it for something trivial.”

“Huh. That might just be—well, the boy is fine, and as grateful as anyone could want, bless his heart. The girl, on the other hand—” Kethry rolled her eyes expressively. “Dear gods and Powers—you’ve never heard such weeping and histrionics in your life. Kero came dragging them both in about dawn, and Her Highness was fine until one of her idiot cousins spotted her and set up a caterwauling. Then—you’d have thought that every wound in the place had been to her fair, white body.”

“About what I figured,” the Shin‘a’in said laconically. “Did you truss her up, or what?”

“I sent her up to the bower with the rest of her hysterical relatives,” Keth told her, the mage’s mouth set in a thin line of distaste. “And I sent Kero to bed, once she’d looked in on her brother. She’s made of good stuff, that girl.”

“She should be,” Tarma replied, pleased that Kero hadn’t fallen apart once she’d reached safety. “But it doesn’t necessarily follow. Well, I’m for bed. And see that you fall into one sometime soon.”

“Soon, hell,” the mage snorted. “I’m going now. There’s nothing to be done at this point that can’t be handled by someone else. There’re half a dozen helpers, fresher and just as skilled.”

Tarma clutched the tunic above her heart. “Blessed Star-Eyed! You’re delegating! I never thought I’d see the day!”

Kethry mimed a blow at her, and the fighter ducked. “Watch yourself, or I’ll turn you into a frog.”

“Oh, would you?” Tarma said hopefully. “Frogs don’t get dragged out of their beds to go rescue stupid wenches in the middle of the night.”

Kethry just threw her hands up in disgust, and turned to find one of her “helpers.”

The tallow should be ready about now, Kero thought, setting her mortar and pestle aside long enough to check the little pot of fat heating over a water-bath. The stillroom was dark, cool, and redolent with the odors of a hundred different herbs, and of all the “womanly” places in the Keep, it was by far Kerowyn’s favorite. Dierna was still having vapors every time she set foot outside the bower—now converted from armory back to women’s quarters by Dierna’s agitated orders—so Grandmother Kethry had entrusted the making of medicines to Kero’s hands.