Briana never so much as whimpered. She even rode with the others.
She was hesitant about that, but when older stallions were brought out for the candidates’ instruction, there was one more of them than usual. Some of the candidates growled. At least one of them yelped: a large hoof had come down on his foot.
The stallion who presented himself for Briana to ride was Kerrec’s own Petra. He slid a bland dark eye at Valeria and studiously ignored the rest of the students.
Briana greeted him with visible gladness. She mounted easily, like the lifelong rider she was.
If she was a little breathless, that was no wonder. No one outside the school ever sat on one of the white gods. It simply was not done.
The gods did as they pleased. Today, that was to teach the emperor’s daughter the beginnings of their art.
It was deceptively simple. They were asked to ride quietly in exact circles without variation of rhythm or figure, over and over until they had perfected the movement. The stallions would give nothing that the riders did not ask. That was the gods’ pleasure and their challenge.
Sabata was unusually tractable today. He walked and trotted and cantered politely, did precisely as Valeria asked, and offered none of his usual opinions on the subject.
Maybe he was ill. He might be a god, and a Great One at that, but his body was mortal.
When the lesson was done, Valeria examined him thoroughly. He seemed well enough. He was pensive, that was all—most unusual for him.
Something was brewing. Valeria paused with her hand on Sabata’s neck, searching the patterns that shaped the world. There was nothing there, nothing clear. The only word she could find for it was imminence.
Sabata shook his mane and snorted. Humans had to attach words to everything. It was a flaw in their creation.
So it was. Valeria dug fingers into his nape until his neck flattened and his lip wobbled in ecstasy. It was revenge of a sort—reminding him that he, too, in this form, had weaknesses.
He was in no way disconcerted by it. That was the trouble with gods. Nothing human could really touch them.
He nipped her, a sharp and startling pain, and departed at the trot for his stable. She stood gaping after him. In all his fits and fusses, he had never bitten her before.
Who could understand a god? She trudged in his wake, slightly humiliated but beginning in spite of herself to be amused.
“Testing isn’t only for the Called, is it?” Briana asked.
She had survived the day in remarkably good condition, considering. At dinner the riders’ stares had changed. Word was out. They knew who she was.
It seemed only reasonable, after dinner, for Valeria to divert Briana from the guesthouse toward the rooms she shared with Kerrec. “He’s gone for the testing,” she said, “and there’s more than enough room. Why be all alone in a cold tower when you can be comfortable?”
Briana needed a little persuasion, but Valeria persisted until she gave in. Now they were sitting by the fire in the study, sipping hot herb tea with honey and talking drowsily. They were both bone-tired, but neither was quite ready to sleep yet.
That was when Briana asked her question. “Even after you pass the testing of the Called,” she said, “the testing goes on. Doesn’t it? It never stops.”
Valeria nodded. “Even the Master is still tested. There’s never any end to it.”
“Magic is like that,” Briana said. “It never lets you rest.”
“Even you?”
“My magic is the empire.”
Briana said it simply, but it meant more than Valeria could easily grasp. Briana tucked up her feet and curled in the big carved chair, watching the dance of the flames. If Valeria opened her eyes just so, she could the patterns there. She wondered if Briana could.
Briana had been Called. That was not the name she gave it, but it was the truth. It was a different Call than Valeria’s or Kerrec’s. The empire was in it somehow.
One of the logs in the fire collapsed on itself, sending up a shower of sparks. The patterns broke and fell into confusion. Valeria’s sigh turned into a yawn.
She did not get up and go to bed just yet. “You’re resting here,” she said.
Briana smiled. “Better than I ever have. I could love this life. This place—these people. The stallions. To ride Petra, it was…” She trailed off.
“But you can’t stay,” Valeria said, “can you?”
Briana shook her head. She did not seem terribly sad, but her smile had died. “The Call takes you away from whatever order of magic you might have been sworn to before. The empire takes me away from everything. I was born for it. I belong to it.”
“Your brother—” Valeria began.
“My brother was born for the Mountain,” Briana said. “Even when he was a child, he’d run away from his duties to be with the horses. I ran away from lessons to hide behind my father’s chair and listen to councils.”
“Even lessons with horses?”
Briana’s lips twitched. “Well. Not those. But everything else. I’d bring one of my books sometimes and do my lessons during the dull parts.”
That made Valeria laugh. “Your father knew, didn’t he?”
“Of course he knew,” said Briana with the flash of a grin. “He never said a word—except years later, when he named me his heir. Then he said, ‘You’ve studied for this all your life. Now be what you knew you would be.’” She went somber suddenly. “I didn’t know. Not that my brother would be Called and the office would come to me. But the gods knew.”
“The gods make me tired,” Valeria said, yawning hugely. “Here, you take the bed. I’ll take the cot in the—”
“Nonsense,” Briana said, and would not hear of taking the larger bed even when Valeria pointed out that she had slept on the servant’s cot for most of last year. “Then I’ll be perfectly comfortable in it. Go on, you’re out on your feet.”
Valeria gave way. She was too tired to fight over it. Briana went off yawning, radiating a quiet happiness that made Valeria smile in spite of herself.
The bed was too large without Kerrec in it. Valeria lay on his side, hugging the pillow to herself and breathing deep.
It smelled of herbs and sunlight. She groaned. The servants had been there while Valeria was out, changing the sheets. There was not even his scent to wrap around her and help her sleep.
She did not want to dream of someone else tonight. She wanted Kerrec.
She had a wild thought of finding him in the First Riders’ hall. But she knew better than to try that. The riders scrupulously ignored certain facts of Valeria’s existence, one of which was that she did not sleep in the servant’s room in Kerrec’s quarters. There were no laws against it, since there had never been a woman rider, but there were proprieties—and those took a dim view of what the two of them were to each other.
Mostly she did not care. Now, in the middle of the candidates’ testing, she found she did. The testing was more important than her comfort.
If she wanted to be honest, tonight was no lonelier than the past few months of nights had been. It was colder without his warmth beside her, but his heart and mind had been elsewhere for longer than she had wanted to accept.
Twelve
The first two days of testing went on apart from the rest of the school. Valeria realized as the first day began that she was knotted tight.
There