Dreamsnake

Vonda N. McIntyre

Chapter 8

Snake woke at the first rays of scarlet morning sun. Melissa was gone. She must have slipped out and returned to the stable, and Snake was afraid for her.

Snake unfolded herself from the window seat and returned to her room, the blanket wrapped around her shoulders. The tower was silent and cool. Her room was empty. Just as well that Gabriel had left, for though she was annoyed at him she did not want to dissipate her anger. It was not he who deserved it, and she had better uses for it. After washing she dressed, looking out over the valley. The eastern peaks still shadowed much of its floor. As she watched, the darkness crept back from the stable and its geometric white-fenced paddocks. Everything was still.

Suddenly, a horse strode from shade to sunlight. Tremendously lengthened, its shadow sprang from its hooves and marched like a giant through the sparkling grass. It was the big piebald stallion, with Melissa perched on his back.

The stallion broke into a canter and moved smoothly across the field. Snake wished she too were riding through the morning with the wind on her face; she could almost hear the hollow drumming of hooves on earth, smell the fragrance of new grass, see glistening dewdrops flung up by her passing.

The stallion galloped across the field, mane and tail flying. Melissa hunched close over his withers. One of the high stone boundary walls loomed before them.

Snake caught her breath, certain the stallion was out of Melissa’s control. His pace never slackened. Snake leaned forward as if she could reach out and stop them before the horse threw the child against the wall. She could see the tension in him, but Melissa sat still and calm. The horse steadied and sailed over the barrier, clean.

A few paces later his canter slowed; he trotted a few steps and then walked, sedately, grandly, toward the stable, as if he, like Melissa, were in no hurry to return.

If she had had any doubts about the truth of anything Melissa had told her, they were gone now. She had not doubted that Ras abused the child: Melissa’s distress and confusion were all too real. Snake had wondered if riding Gabriel’s horse had been an understandable fantasy, but it was equally real and it made Snake understand how difficult it might be to free her young friend. Melissa was valuable to Ras and he would not want to let her go. Snake was afraid to go straight to the mayor, with whom she had no rapport, and denounce Ras for the twisted thing he was. Who would believe her? In daylight she herself had trouble believing such a thing could ever happen, and Melissa was too frightened to accuse Ras directly. Snake did not blame her.

Snake went to the other tower and knocked on the mayor’s door. As the noise echoed in the stone hallways she realized how early it was. But she did not really care; she was in no mood for conventional courtesy.

Brian opened the door. “Yes, mistress?”

“I’ve come to speak to the mayor about my payment.”

He bowed her inside. “He’s awake. I’m sure he’ll see you.”

Snake lifted one eyebrow at the implication that he might choose not to see her. But the servant had spoken the way a man does who worships another person beyond consideration for any other customs. Brian did not deserve her anger either.

“He’s been wakeful all night,” Brian said, leading her toward the tower room. “The scab itches so badly—perhaps you could—?”

“If it isn’t infected it’s a matter for the chemist, not for me,” Snake said coldly.

Brian glanced back at her. “But, mistress—”

“I’ll speak to him alone, Brian. Will you please send for the stablemaster and for Melissa?”

“Melissa?” It was his turn to raise his eyebrows. “Is that the red-haired child?”

“Yes.”

“Mistress, are you sure you wish her to come here?”

“Please do as I ask.”

He bowed slightly, his face again the mask of a perfect servant. Snake stepped past him into the mayor’s bedroom.

The mayor lay contorted on his bed, sheets and blankets in a tangle around him and on the floor. The bandages and dressing sagged away from his leg and the clean brown scab. His expression one of pleasure and relief, he scratched the healing wound slowly.

He saw Snake and tried to pull the bandages back up, smiling guiltily.

“It does itch,” he said. “I suppose that means it’s getting well?”

“Scratch all you want,” Snake said. “I’ll be two days gone by the time you reinfect it.”

He snatched his hand away and pushed himself back up on his pillows. Awkwardly trying to straighten the bedclothes, he looked around, irritable again. “Where’s Brian?”

“He’s doing a favor for me.”

“I see.” Snake detected more annoyance in his tone, but the mayor let the subject drop. “Did you want to see me about something?”

“My payment.”

“Of course—I should have brought it up myself. I had no idea you were leaving us so soon, my dear.”

Snake hated endearments from people toward whom she did not feel dear. Grum must have said the same words to her fifty times, a hundred times a day, and they had not grated the way this man’s did.

“I know of no town that refuses Mountainside currency,” he said. “They know we never adulterate the metal or short-weigh the coins. However, we can pay you in precious stones if you prefer.”

“I want neither,” Snake said. “I want Melissa.”

“Melissa? A citizen? Healer, it took me twenty years to overcome Mountainside’s reputation as a place of bonding! We free bondservants, we don’t take them.”

“Healers don’t keep bondservants. I should have said I want her freedom. She wants to leave with me, but your stablemaster Ras is—what do you call it?—her guardian.”

The mayor stared at her. “Healer, I can’t ask a man to break up his family.”

Snake forced herself not to react. She did not want to have to explain her disgust. When she did not reply, the mayor fidgeted, rubbed his leg, pulled his hand away from the bandage again.

“This is very complicated. Are you sure you won’t choose something else?”

“Are you refusing my request?”

He recognized her tone as the veiled threat it was; he touched the call-bell and Brian reappeared.

“Send a message to Ras. Ask him to come up as soon as he can. He’s to bring his child as well.”

“The healer has sent for them already, sir.”

“I see.” He gazed at Snake as Brian withdrew. “Suppose he refuses your demands?”

“Anyone is free to refuse payment to a healer,” Snake said. “We carry weapons only for defense and we never make threats. But we do not go where we are not welcome.”

“You mean you boycott any place that doesn’t please you.”

Snake shrugged.

“Ras is here, sir,” Brian said from the doorway.

“Ask him to come in.”

Snake tensed, forcing herself to control contempt and revulsion. The big man entered the room, ill at ease. His hair was damp and haphazardly slicked back. He bowed slightly to the mayor.

Behind Ras, next to Brian, Melissa hung back. The old servant drew her into the room, but she did not look up.

“It’s all right, child,” the mayor said. “You aren’t here for punishment.”

“That’s hardly the way to reassure anyone!” Snake snapped.

“Healer, please, sit down,” the mayor said gently. “Ras—?” He nodded to two chairs.

Ras seated himself, glancing at Snake with dislike. Brian urged Melissa forward until she was standing between Snake and Ras, but she kept her gaze fixed on the floor.

“Ras is your guardian,” the mayor said. “Is that correct?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

Ras reached out, put one finger against Melissa’s shoulder, and shoved lightly but deliberately. “Show some respect when you speak to the mayor.”

“Sir.” Melissa’s voice was soft and shaky.

“Melissa,” Snake said, “he asked you up here to find out what it is you want to do.”

Ras swung around. “What she wants to do? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Healer,” the mayor said again, his cautioning tone a little more emphatic, “please. Ras, I’m in considerable difficulty. And only you, my friend, can help me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The healer saved my life, you know, and now it’s time to pay her. It seems she and your child have taken a fancy to one another.”

“So what is it you want me to do?”

“I’d not ask you to make this sacrifice if not for the good of the town. And according to the healer it’s what your child wishes.”

“What’s what she wishes?”

“Your child—”

“Melissa,” Snake said.

“Her name isn’t Melissa,” Ras said shortly. “It isn’t that now and it never has been.”

“Then you tell the mayor what you call her!”

“What I call her is more honest than the airs she puts on. She gave herself that name.”

“Then it’s all the more hers.”

“Please,” the mayor said. “We’re talking about the child’s guardianship, not her name.”

“Her guardianship? Is that what this is all about? You mean you want me to give her away?”

“That’s a harsh way of putting it, but… accurate.”

Ras glanced at Melissa, who had not moved, and then at Snake. Before he turned back to the mayor he concealed the quick flash of insight and triumph that Snake saw clearly.

“Send her off with a stranger? I’ve been her guardian since she was three. Her parents were my friends. Where else could she go where she’d be happy and people wouldn’t stare at her?”

“She isn’t happy here,” Snake said.

“Stare at her? Why?”

“Raise your head,” Ras said to Melissa. When she did not obey he prodded her again, and slowly she looked up.

The mayor’s reaction was more controlled than Gabriel’s had been, but still he flinched. Melissa avoided his stare quickly, gazing stolidly at the floor again and letting her hair fall in front of her face.

“She was burned in the stable fire, sir,” Ras said. “She nearly died. I took care of her.”

The mayor turned toward Snake. “Healer, won’t you change your mind?”

“Doesn’t it matter if she wants to come with me? Anywhere else that would be all there is to it.”

“Do you want to go with her, child? Ras has been good to you, hasn’t he? Why do you want to leave us?”

Her hands clenched tightly together behind her back, Melissa did not answer. Snake willed her to speak, but knew she would not; she was too frightened, and with good reason.

“She’s just a child,” the mayor said. “She can’t make a decision like this. The responsibility has to be mine, just like the responsibility for guarding Mountainside’s children has been mine for twenty years.”

“Then you must realize I can do more for her than either of you,” Snake said. “If she stays here she’ll spend her life hiding in a stable. Let her go with me and she won’t have to hide any more.”

“She’ll always hide,” Ras said. “Poor little scar-face.”

“You’ve made sure she’ll never forget that!”

“He hasn’t necessarily done an unkindness there, healer,” the mayor said gently.

“All you people see is beauty!” Snake cried, and knew they would not understand what she was saying.

“She needs me,” Ras said. “Don’t you, girl? Who else would take care of you like I do? And now you want to leave?” He shook his head. “I don’t understand. Why would she want to go? And why do you want her?”

“That’s an excellent question, healer,” the mayor said. “Why do you want this child? People might be all too willing to say we’ve gone from selling our beautiful children to disposing of our disfigured ones.”

“She can’t spend her whole life hiding,” Snake said. “She’s a talented child, she’s smart and she’s brave. I can do more for her than anyone can here. I can help her have a profession. I can help her be someone who won’t be judged on her scars.”

“A healer?”

“It’s possible, if that’s what she wants.”

“What you’re saying is, you’d adopt her.”

“Yes, of course. What else?”

The mayor turned to Ras. “It would be quite a coup for Mountainside if one of our people became a healer.”

“She wouldn’t be happy away from here,” Ras said.

“Don’t you want to do what’s best for the child?” The mayor’s voice had softened, taking on a cajoling tone.

“Is sending her away from her home what’s best? Would you send your—” Ras cut himself off, paling.

The mayor lay back against his pillows. “No, I wouldn’t send my own child away. But if he chose to go, I’d let him.” He smiled at Ras sadly. “You and I have similar problems, my friend. Thank you for reminding me.” He put his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling for long moments.

“You can’t send her away,” Ras said. “It’s just the same as selling her as a bondservant.”

“Ras, my friend,” the mayor said gently.

“Don’t try to tell me any different. I know better and so will everyone else.”

“But the benefits—”

“Do you really believe anyone would offer this poor little thing the chance to be a healer? The idea’s crazy.”

Melissa glanced quickly, surreptitiously, at Snake, her emotions as always masked, then lowered her gaze again.

“I don’t like being called a liar,” Snake said.

“Healer, Ras didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Let’s all be calm. We aren’t talking so much about reality as appearances. Appearances are very important and they’re what people believe. I have to take that into account. Don’t think it’s easy keeping this office. More than one young firebrand—and some who aren’t so young—would move me out of my home if I gave them a chance. No matter that I’ve been here twenty years. A charge of bonding—” He shook his head.

Snake watched him talk himself back toward refusal, helpless to turn him toward acceptance. Ras had known exactly what arguments would affect him most, while Snake had assumed that she would be trusted, or at the very least be given her own way. But the possible healer’s interdict against Mountainside was a future problem, made even more serious by how rare healers’ visits to the town had become in recent years.

If the mayor could risk accepting her ultimatum, Snake could not risk bringing it into force. She could not chance leaving Melissa with Ras another day, another hour; Snake had put her in too much danger. What was more, she had shown her dislike of the stablemaster, so the mayor might not believe what she said about him. Even if Melissa accused him, there was no proof. Snake searched desperately for another way to win Melissa’s freedom; she hoped she had not already ruined any chance of gaining it directly.

She spoke as calmly as she could. “I withdraw my request.”

Melissa caught her breath but did not look up again. The mayor’s expression turned to one of relief, and Ras sat back in his chair.

“On one condition,” Snake said. She paused to choose her words well, to say only what could be proven. “On one condition. When Gabriel leaves, he’s going north. Let Melissa go with him, as far as Middlepath.” Snake said nothing about Gabriel’s plans; they were his business and no one else’s. “A fine women’s teacher lives there, and she wouldn’t turn down anyone who needed her guidance.”

A small damp patch widened on the front of Melissa’s shirt, as tears fell silently on the rough material. Snake hurried on.

“Let Melissa go with Gabriel. Her training might take longer than usual because she’s so old to start. But it’s for her health and her safety. Even if Ras loves—” she almost choked on the word—”loves her too much to give her up to the healers, he won’t keep her from this.”

Ras’s ruddy complexion paled.

“Middlepath?” The mayor scowled. “We have perfectly good teachers here. Why does she need to go to Middlepath?”

“I know you value beauty,” Snake said, “but I think you also value self-control. Let Melissa learn the skills, even if she has to go elsewhere to find a teacher.”

“Do you mean to tell me this child has never been to one?”

“Of course she has!” Ras cried. “It’s a trick to get the girl out of our protection! You think you can come to a place and change everybody around to suit yourself!” Ras yelled at Snake. “Now you think people will believe anything you and that ungrateful little brat can make up about me. Everybody else is afraid of you and your slimy reptiles, but I’m not. Set one on me, go ahead, and I’ll mash it flat!” He stopped abruptly and glanced right and left as if he had forgotten where he was. He had no way to make a dramatic exit.

“You needn’t guard yourself against serpents,” Snake said.

Ignoring him, ignoring Snake, the mayor leaned toward Melissa. “Child, have you been to a women’s teacher?”

Melissa hesitated, but finally she answered. “I don’t know what that is.”

“No one would accept her,” Ras said.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Our teachers don’t refuse people. Did you take her to one or not?”

Ras stared at his knees and said nothing more.

“It’s easy enough to check.”

“No, sir.”

“No! No?” The mayor flung off the bedclothes and got up, stumbling but catching himself. He stood over Ras, a big man confronting another big man, two huge handsome creatures facing each other, one livid, one pale before the other’s rage.

“Why not?”

“She doesn’t need a teacher.”

“How dare you do such a thing!” The mayor leaned forward until Ras was pressed back in the chair away from him. “How dare you endanger her! How dare you condemn her to ignorance and discomfort!”

“She isn’t in danger! She doesn’t need to protect herself—who would ever touch her?”

“You touch me!” Melissa ran to Snake and flung herself against her. Snake hugged the child close.

“You—” The mayor straightened and stepped back. Brian, appearing silently, supported him before his leg failed him. “What does she mean, Ras? Why is she so frightened?”

Ras shook his head.

“Make him say it!” Melissa cried, facing them squarely. “Make him!”

The mayor limped to her and stooped down awkwardly. He looked Melissa directly in the face. Neither he nor she flinched.

“I know you’re frightened of him, Melissa. Why is he so frightened of you?”

“Because Mistress Snake believes me.”

The mayor drew in a long breath. “Did you want him?”

“No,” she whispered.

“Ungrateful little brat!” Ras yelled. “Spiteful ugly thing! Who else but me would ever touch her?”

The mayor ignored Ras and took Melissa’s hand in both his.

“The healer’s your guardian from now on. You’re free to go with her.”

“Thank you. Thank you, sir.”

The mayor lurched back to his feet. “Brian, find me her guardianship papers in the city records—Sit down, Ras—And Brian, I’ll want a messenger to ride into town. To the menders.”

“You slaver,” Ras growled. “So this is how you steal children. People will—”

“Shut up, Ras.” The mayor sounded exhausted far beyond his brief exertion, and he was pale. “I can’t exile you. I have a responsibility to protect other people. Other children. Your troubles are my troubles now, and they must be resolved. Will you talk to the menders?”

“I don’t need the menders.”

“Will you go voluntarily or would you prefer a trial?”

Ras lowered himself slowly back into the chair, and finally nodded. “Voluntarily,” he said.

Snake stood up, her arm around Melissa’s shoulders, Melissa with an arm around her waist and her head turned slightly so the scar was almost concealed. Together they walked away.

“Thank you, healer,” the mayor said.

“Good-bye,” Snake said, and shut the door.

She and Melissa walked through the echoing hallway to the second tower.

“I was so scared,” Melissa said.

“So was I. For a little while I thought I’d have to steal you.”

Melissa looked up. “Would you really do that?”

“Yes.”

Melissa was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Sorry! What for?”

“I should have trusted you. I didn’t. But I will from now on. I won’t be scared any more.”

“You had a right to be scared, Melissa.”

“I’m not now. I won’t be any more. Where are we going?” For the first time since Melissa had offered to ride Squirrel, her voice held self-confidence and enthusiasm with no undertone of dread.

“Well,” Snake said, “I think you should go on up north to the healers’ station. Home.”

“What about you?”

“I have one more thing I have to do before I can go home. Don’t worry, you can go almost halfway with Gabriel. I’ll write a letter for you to take, and you’ll have Squirrel. They’ll know I sent you.”

“I’d rather go with you.”

Realizing how shaken Melissa was, Snake stopped. “I’d rather have you come too, please believe me. But I have to go to Center and it might not be safe.”

“I’m not afraid of any crazy. Besides, if I’m along we can keep watch.”

Snake had forgotten about the crazy; the reminder brought a quick shock of memory.

“Yes, the crazy’s another problem. But the storms are coming, it’s nearly winter. I don’t know if I can get back from the city before then.” And it would be better for Melissa to become established at the station, before Snake returned, in case the trip to Center failed. Then, even if Snake had to leave, Melissa would be able to remain.

“I don’t care about the storms,” Melissa said. “I’m not afraid.”

“I know you’re not. It’s just that there’s no reason for you to be in danger.”

Melissa did not reply. Snake knelt down and turned the child toward her.

“Do you think I’m trying to avoid you now?”

After a few moments, Melissa said, “I don’t know what to think, Mistress Snake. You said if I didn’t live here I could be responsible for myself and do what I thought was right. But I don’t think it’s right for me to leave you, with the crazy and the storms.”

Snake sat back on her heels. “I did say all that. I meant it, too.” She looked down at her scarred hands, sighed, and glanced up again at Melissa. “I better tell you the real reason I want you to go home. I should have told you before.”

“What is it?” Melissa’s voice was tight, controlled; she was ready to be hurt again. Snake took her hand.

“Most healers have three serpents. I only have two. I did something stupid and the third one was killed.” She told Melissa about Arevin’s people, about Stavin and Stavin’s younger father and Grass.

“There aren’t very many dreamsnakes,” Snake said. “It’s hard to make them breed. Actually we never make them breed, we just wait and hope they might. The way we get more is something like the way I made Squirrel.”

“With the special medicine,” Melissa said.

“Sort of.” The alien biology of dreamsnakes lent itself neither to viral transduction nor to microsurgery. Earth viruses could not interact with the chemicals the dreamsnakes used in place of DNA, and the healers had been unsuccessful in isolating anything comparable to a virus from the alien serpents. So they could not transfer the genes for dreamsnake venom into another serpent, and no one had ever been successful in synthesizing all the venom’s hundreds of components.

“I made Grass,” Snake said, “and four other dreamsnakes. But I can’t make them anymore. My hands aren’t steady enough, the same thing’s wrong with them that was wrong with my knee yesterday.” Sometimes she wondered if her arthritis was as much psychological as physical, a reaction against sitting in the laboratory for hours at a time, delicately manipulating the controls of the micropipette and straining her eyes to find each of the innumerable nuclei in a single cell from a dreamsnake. She had been the first healer in some years to succeed in transplanting genetic material into an unfertilized ovum. She had had to prepare several hundred to end up with Grass and his four siblings; even so, her percentage was better than that of anyone else who had ever managed the task. No one at all had ever discovered what made the serpents mature. So the healers had a small stock of frozen immature ova, gleaned from the bodies of dreamsnakes that had died, but no one could clone them; and a frozen stock of what was probably dreamsnake sperm, cells too immature to fertilize the ova when they were mixed in a test tube.

Snake believed her success to be a matter of luck as much as technique. If her people had the technology needed to build one of the electron microscopes described in their books, she felt sure they would find genes independent of the nuclear bodies, molecules so small they could not be seen, too small to transplant unless the micropipette sucked them up by chance.

“I’m going to Center to deliver a message, and to ask the people there to help us get more dreamsnakes. But I’m afraid they’ll refuse. And if I have to go home without any, after I lost mine, I don’t know what will happen. A few dreamsnakes might have hatched since I left, some might even have been cloned, but if not, I might not be allowed to be a healer. I can’t be a good one without a dreamsnake.”

“If there aren’t any others they should give you one of the ones you made,” Melissa said. “That’s the only thing that’s fair.”

“It wouldn’t be fair to the younger healers I gave them to, though,” Snake said. “I’d have to go home and say to a brother or sister that they couldn’t be a healer unless the dreamsnakes we have reproduce again.” She let out her breath in a long sigh. “I want you to know all that. That’s why I want you to go home before I do, so everyone gets a chance to know you. I had to get you away from Ras, but if you go home with me, I don’t know for sure that things will be much better.”

“Snake!” Melissa was angry. “No matter what, being with you will be better than—than being in Mountainside. I don’t care what happens. Even if you hit me—”

“Melissa!” Snake said, as shocked as the child had been.

Melissa grinned, the right side of her mouth curving up slightly. “See?” she said.

“Okay.”

“It’ll be all right,” Melissa said. “I don’t care what happens at the healers’ station. And I know, the storms are dangerous. And I saw you after you fought the crazy, so I know he’s dangerous too. But I still want to go with you. Please don’t make me go with anybody else.”

“You’re sure.”

Melissa nodded.

“All right,” Snake said. She grinned. “I never adopted anybody before. Theories aren’t the same when you actually have to start using them. We’ll go together.” In truth, she appreciated the complete confidence that Melissa, at least, had in her.

They walked down the hall hand in hand, swinging their arms like two children instead of a child and an adult. Then they rounded the last corner and Melissa suddenly pulled back. Gabriel was sitting outside Snake’s door, saddle-pack by his side, his chin on his drawn-up knees.

“Gabriel,” Snake said.

He looked up, and this time he did not flinch when he saw Melissa.

“Hello,” he said to her. “I’m sorry.”

Melissa had turned toward Snake so the worst of the scar was hidden. “It’s all right. Never mind. I’m used to it.”

“I wasn’t really awake last night…” Gabriel saw the look on Snake’s face and fell silent.

Melissa glanced at Snake, who squeezed her hand, then at Gabriel, and back at Snake. “I better—I’ll go get the horses ready.”

“Melissa—” Snake reached for her but she fled. Snake watched her go, sighed, and opened the door to her room. Gabriel stood up.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“You do have a knack.” She went inside, picked up her saddlebags, and tossed them on the bed.

Gabriel followed her. “Please don’t be angry with me.”

“I’m not angry.” She opened the flaps. “I was last night, but I’m not now.”

“I’m glad.” Gabriel sat on the bed and watched her pack. “I’m ready to leave. But I wanted to say goodbye. And thank you. And I’m sorry…”

“No more of that,” Snake said.

“All right.”

Snake folded her clean desert robes and put them in the saddlebag.

“Why don’t I go with you?” Gabriel leaned forward anxiously with his elbows on his knees. “It must be easier to travel with someone to talk to than alone.”

“I won’t be alone. Melissa’s coming with me.”

“Oh.” He sounded hurt.

“I’m adopting her, Gabriel. Mountainside isn’t a place for her—no more than it is for you, right now. I can help her, but I can’t do anything for you. Except make you dependent on me. I don’t want to do that. You’ll never find your strengths without your freedom.”

Snake put the sack with her toothpowder and comb and aspirin and soap into the saddlebag, buckled the flap, and sat down. She took Gabriel’s soft strong hand.

“Here they make it too hard for you. I could make it too easy. Neither way is right.”

He lifted her hand and kissed it, the tanned, scarred back and the cup of her palm.

“You see how fast you learn?” She brushed her other hand across his fair fine hair.

“Will I ever see you again?”

“I don’t know,” Snake said. “Probably not.” She smiled. “You won’t need to.”

“I’d like to,” he said wistfully.

“Go out in the world,” Snake said. “Take your life in your hands and make it what you want.”

He stood up, leaned down, and kissed her. Rising, she kissed him back more gently than she wanted to, wishing they had more time, wishing she had met him first in a year or so. She spread her fingers across his back and turned the embrace into a hug.

“Good-bye, Gabriel.”

“Good-bye, Snake.”

The door closed softly behind him.

Snake let Mist and Sand out of the serpent case for a short spell of freedom before the long trip. They glided over her feet and around her legs as she looked out the window.

There was a knock on Snake’s door.

“Just a minute.” She let Mist crawl up her arm and over her shoulder, and picked Sand up in both hands. It would not be long before he would grow too large to coil comfortably around her wrist.

“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.